To be feeling like a broodmare

[maritimebear]

I am due my first child in mid February. The pregnancy was unplanned. I was initially fairly neutral about it but in the early stages I was so horrendously ill I wanted to end the pregnancy. Dh was devastated when I said that and so I agreed to continue.

However, I just have never felt good about it. No real feelings of excitement or sense of a new life approaching. I’m dreading the birth, and really not looking forward to anything about being a mum.

Anyway, I have now finished work and am struggling. But what I’m really struggling with is that no one ever talks to me about things that aren’t to do with pregnancy, birth (I do NOT want to know) babies or parenting. And dh is in this category. And it sounds stupid but it’s as if he’s taken over, he has ‘decided’ our children’s names and he has decided how best to raise them, what our family looks like.

We are going away Friday and I just know I’m going to be stuck in a car with him going on about babies.

I sound awful.

Is this my life now?

OP I felt similar to you when I was pregnant. My pregnancy was totally unplanned and everyone knew I’d never wanted a child. When people found out I was pregnant it was a cause of much hilarity for everyone - yes you can imagine how crap I felt then. I remember going down stairs in the middle of the night, every night, and crying for an hour by myself then returning to bed when DP was sleeping obliviously.

On the morning of my planned c-section I was even considering signing the baby over to DP and leaving. My story had a happy ending though, the moment DD was born things fell into place and I loved her. However, I REALLY wish my pregnancy hadn’t been ruined by my antenatal depression. I’d urge you to speak to your GP as soon as you can and your midwife - it should be possible to change if you really don’t gel with her. Also tell DH how you feel and at you need his understanding not pressure about having number 2. Get him to read about antenatal depression as well, this might help him realise what you’re going through.

Antenatal depression isn’t talked about as much as postnatal but it’s just as real and can develop into PND so it’s important you get the right people to help you and look after you.

Good luck, OP, I wish you well.

I was the same with DS2. I actually think I had antenatal depression. My husband sat me down at one point and told me we could end the pregnancy if it was making me so very unhappy. However now he's here, he is literally the sweetest most loving little baby. My birth was the best experience of my life and he has breathed new joy and excitement into our little family unit. Don't assume these feelings will continue after birth. It's not always the case. The best of luck with the rest of your pregnancy and birth.

Thanks.

I don’t have anyone. We only moved here within the last twelve months, and I had some friends at work but not really now I’m off.

I’m on my own a lot.

I really feel for you. I felt similar to you when pregnant with my second child. I was eventually diagnosed with antenatal depression, although it did take me telling how I felt to many different health professionals before I managed to get any help. I was referred for CBT but the waiting lists meant I had given birth by the time I saw the counsellor.

My advice is to ask for help from everyone you can - your GP, current midwife, any other midwife you can see at the hospital, even A&E if you feel really desperate. Your best bet for real help is a referral to a specialist midwife and a psychiatrist attached to a antenatel unit.
Keep asking for help, it is understandable to find pregnancy difficult - it often makes you feel like crap physically and is a massive life change. When you've not planned it, it can be incredibly difficult to come to terms with. We also tried to get couple counselling, as explaining to my husband how I felt was one of my problems. If there is any way you can pay for a few sessions, it could be worthwhile for your relationship and also for your bond with your baby.

Anti-depressants can help, they take a while to work so persevere. Many have been taken in pregnancy without any harm to the baby but they have not been 'proven' to be safe, as it would be unethical to do a full blind test on pregnant women. But when you are unable to enjoy anything, you are suffering from depression and treatment is needed.

To give you some hope - I fell in love with my baby when he was born. He was and is the apple of my eye, I adore him and he is the best thing that ever happened to us, despite me wishing I wasn't pregnant for the whole 9 months. I think without talking about it, I would have struggled to bond, so am glad I asked for help, difficult though it was.

I also think that pregnancy and motherhood has been.. I don't know the right word: fetishised? sanctified? commercialised? all these things? [see also Christmas/holidays/making memories] so that if you DON'T feel all yippy skippy about it then people hush you and keep talking about it.

Practically:

You don't need to be excited about it, but it is going to happen. You just have to prepare to deal with it as best you can without damaging your child. Ie please don't ever actually tell them that you didn't want them.

You may be at an advantage in some ways in that you're not heading into the birth thinking it will be all whale music and calm breathing followed by weeks of kittens and unicorns. You can be in a position to demand the best outcomes for you and your baby whatever they are.

Your state of mind sounds like you may have AND - completely your choice not to take medication and I understand that. But after the birth you need to be in as good a place psychologically as possibly to effectively bond with your baby. If that means being able to take drugs to offset possible PND, do it. And access therapy and medical advice.

You do not have to approach motherhood in a big haze of fluffiness and kittens with no personal identity left for yourself to be a good mother.

I really feel for you. Please use parental leave for your dh if you have to, and see the many stories here of women who went back to work quite early to regain their identity. It's better that with great, consistent and loving childcare than having you wandering the streets with a buggy six months down the line wanting to top yourself and resenting the baby.

It's perfectly ok not to enjoy pregnancy. It's sold as a lovely time and that somehow you're already failing at parenting if you don't like being pregnant, but that's bollocks. I hated being pregnant both times with a passion, and with DC2 particularly. Especially at the end it can feel like everything is about the fucking baby and that drove me barmy.

However, while it can help to acknowledge that how you feel during pregnancy (you can't move, you look like a whale, you're being kicked in the ribs every 30 seconds, you need to pee constantly etc etc) is not something you enjoy and that is absolutely fine, it is worth mentioning to the GP or midwife just so they can monitor if it slips over into depression. I had antenatal depression with DC2 and it can be so awful.

Also, you do need to talk to your DH. This is both of your baby, he does not get to decide on names and that himself. And also, unfortunate as some people might consider it for me, because you are the one suffering the physical and mental effects of being pregnant, the last say on whether you have another DC is yours, if you don't want to be pregnant again.

@maritimebear
I completely empathise with how you are feeling. I chose to have DC1 because although I had no maternal urges all my peers had young families and I had a vision of my middle age with children in it...therefore we started a family. I was very logical about it all; ate what I should and avoided what I should, but felt completely disembodied from the baby itself: random people touching me and then saying 'do you mind'; no-one wanting to talk about work or love or current affairs or food, just baby this and baby that. All my friends suddenly became annoying knowledgeable about things I didn't even want to ask about. We did the classes, wrote a birth plan etc etc etc.

The birth is usually hard work and painful and pretty grim: there's no way to dress it up really. But I can also tell you that the moment you push the baby out the pain vanishes and you are so flooded with endorphins you have the biggest high of your life. Within 10 mins I was talking about having another one while my DH looked at me like this .

I sat on the edge of the bed in the ward looking at this wrinkly scrap wrapped in a blanket in a plastic box for hours, feeling as if someone had punched me in the chest I just loved them so much. Never felt anything like it before or since. They say that babies bring there own love with them. my first DC definitely did.

Love for DC2 grew over a few weeks which is completely normal too, but that first one, where the whole pregnancy was a bit 'meh' hit me like a lightening bolt.

You may lose yourself a little for a while (and more so when you are sleep deprived in the first few weeks) but it comes back and you will be yourself again.

I suppose I am worried about what happens if the love just doesn’t come.

I really didn't enjoy my pregnancy . Also unplanned. I was fairly young, relationship ended at beggining of pregnancy so newly single was a crap time generally and it was a complete lifestyle change for me . I felt miserable through quite a lot of it and now looking back wonder if I had ante natal depression

The moment he was born it was like the weight of the world just fell off my shoulders , I was completely in love with ds and being a mum turned out the best thing for me .

Sorry if that sounds smug im just trying to show that we are not all in love and finding it all magical from the minute we see that positive test .

Shit, I’ve just lost my comment! The second version of it might be a bit rambling, tbh. But I hope I’ll still manage to get my point across.

During my 2 pregnancies? The last months were hellish (heartburn, swollen feet, being so slow, not being able to sleep comfortably...) there’s nothing wrong with not enjoying being pregnant / not feeling that ‘pregnancy glow’ etc You do not sound awful seriously!

I have ADHD and being pregnant meant that I couldn’t do my favourite sport or genuinely strenuous / intense exercise. One of my main coping mechanisms...

And whilst taking medication during pregnancy does tend to be associated with certain risks, I do think that you need to weigh them up with the effect not taking them might have on your mental health and therefore also your child! (Which is what I did...)

DH had to live with a house being plastered with notes, remembering aides lying on the floor, the additional costs of hiring help for certain things etc... I’m sure he was annoyed but he support me. Because that’s what good partners do. They don’t make you feel guilty for MH issues.

Your OH should support you. If you want to talk about dog breeding or whatever instead of babies? Then he should respect that. good partners support their pregnant partners.

Also, I’m sure that the doctor didn’t give you something that would be unsafe during pregnancy. Please look after your MH. For your sake and the sake of your DC!

I felt quite disembodied from the first baby experience and definitely had the opposite from the endorphins etc in fact my first feeling was omfg i have to do that AGAIN, EVER to get another one? But then I was convinced going in I just had to have the right attitude and breathe it out with hypnobirthing which definitely is a good idea but not for all and not for me! (Second time round was an enchantingly lush c-section for various medical reasons - I loved it. There's no accounting for tastes is there!)

BUT while not instantaneous the love and the bonding grew from every day of incredibly intense hard but rewarding work. I hasten to add I am now massive attachment parenting love bunny who is great mum. But I hate all the CONFORMITY of having a baby, it's like having a wedding but worse.

You definitely don't have to have another if you don't want to! You poor thing.

*supported me etc...

Anyhow:

Is there something you’d enjoy doing? A way to build up a support network?

I think it’s important to remember that you deserve your OH’s support. That’s not him going out of his way or anything. That’s him doing what he should do...

As for the love. It’s imo quite unlikely that it won’t come. It might take some time to properly kick in but that’s perfectly alright as well.

But please look after your MH, that’s one the biggest stumbling blocks in developing a mother child relationship I can think of.

As for the pills... many of them take time to start working. That’s perfectly normal. He certainly didn’t give you anything that’s genuinely unsafe for you or your DC.

You’ve had some wonderful advice already
Just remember, the thing about childbirth, like lots of other things, is that people love to tell the dramatic stories. Yes, things do sometimes go wrong, and there are horror stories - but those people are the minority!
You can do this

No ... I’m fed up of hearing about support networks to be honest (sorry if that sounds horrible) but it’s one of the reasons I don’t really like talking to midwives.

I suppose I am worried about what happens if the love just doesn’t come.
One way or another it will come unless you are ill/depressed (in which case see GP and get help). It's our species' way of ensuring young are cared for and the human race survives.

A support network is a fancy way of saying do you have someone you do favours for and they do favours for you? It doesn't need to be a relative, or someone you know from an antenatal class. It sounds like your DH is dealing with his own issues at the moment so we won't include him, but you only need one person to be a network. Think of it as a safety valve.

But is illness the only reason parents don’t love their children? I don’t know. I suppose I just need to pretend I do.

He sounds insanly selfish. He has basically told you what todo with your body. I would go to the doctors.

What do you think could help you? Other than not being pregnant. Who do you think you could talk to, frankly?

I had depression and I couldn't believe the screening form they gave me for PND. I thought who would answer honestly?! I didn't want anyone to know.

At least you can say it out loud anonymously here until you are ready to get help.

I felt like this with my first. And for a while after. Don't get me wrong, I cared for and was good with him, but I largely felt like I'd ruined my life, that he'd be better off without me.
I was on my own, I didn't exist to anyone anymore except to be the bearer of this child.
I don't know when, but I came out of the fog of it, realised how poorly I was and sought help.
I now have ds2, and I hated pregnancy again, but this time when he arrived it was instantly love and this connection. I'm watching him waddle around the room as I type this out, ds1 beside me playing with Christmas presents. I've never felt so lucky and in love.

Pregnancy is scarier than people let on a lot of the time. Specially when you're feeling as you are. Please see your doctor, they can refer you to a different midwife, trained in mh and able to provide a much better support to you.
You'll be ok, you really will. I know you can't see that just now though. Speak to your dh, tell him to lay off the baby talk- he should be listening to your needs right now

Although I didn't really like NCT classes themselves, they did give me the [network] seven other people going through the same thing as me at the same time and a sort of instant gang to go to the cafe with so that I wasn't alone. Five years on we are still chums - not all besties, but good mates.

Your husband sounds awful and I think HE is your problem.

I don’t feel I could join the NCT. I just feel out of sync with everybody because I should be excited about having a baby and I’m not. At all.

That’s perfectly alright. Please stop saying that your perfectly legitimage needs and feelings are horrible. They’re not. You don’t sound horrible either.

Is there something concrete that would help you? And if yes, do you know how to go about receiving it?

Also, I really do think that the situation and behaviour of your OH is genuinely ‘horrible’.

No, not having a second one won’t be ‘cruel’. And he should start being genuinely supportive. Whining and making you feel guilty is simply not acceptable.

Would you feel comfortable speaking to a therapist? I didn’t have a good experience with midwives during my first pregnancy either.

Just to say that I felt fairly similar to you - it wasn't depression, it was well-founded fear of the unknown (and the known, I remember being about 4 months' pregnant and at a well known attraction on a bank holiday weekend and thinking - OMG what have we done, kids are just sooo demanding).

The second I gave birth, I couldn't imagine not having my son. It is a shock to the system, but it feels much better once the baby is there. Pregnancy isn't fun, and it sounds like you've had it harder than most.

If you still feel the same after the birth, that's the time to seek help if you think you need it, but don't let people on here worry you into thinking you're somehow ill. Being scared and fed up of being pregnant is normal!

he whines on about how it’s unfair for him/her to be an only

The very first reaction I had when I gave birth to my son was thank goodness I don't have to do that ever again. Tell him to do one. Nothing wrong with being an only child. But you may change your mind. I had a friend who never wanted any children ever. She had her first accidentally and wasn't very pleased about it (she was married at the time, just didn't think she wanted kids) - and had two more! So things can change.