To consider DNA testing?

[Irrationalanxiety]

Our beautiful baby was born two weeks ago and I have been suffering with anxiety ever since, as everything seems too good to be true.

One irrational fear I cannot let go was set into motion by the fact that our baby doesn’t really seem to look like either of us. We can’t have managed to take the wrong one home (I believe it has happened!) as there are distinctive birth marks and I don’t remember leaving the baby unattended.

This led me to cast my mind back to a function I attended which culminated in a party in a hotel room. I drunk too much (and haven’t drunk since) and don’t remember the end of the night but did wake up in the room with several others. I have no reason to believe that anything happened - in fact those present said it didn’t. At the time I had the fear so badly before asking anyone that I took Levonelle the next day. I was around cycle day 10 of a 30 day cycle.

Two weeks later my period arrived early, and I conceived that cycle. My due date was determined over the course of several early scans due to bleeding and remained consistent to within a couple of days from six weeks through to the twelve week scan. It was a week behind what would have been calculated from LMP but this was expected due to my slightly longer cycles. Our baby was born the day after due date at 40+1.

It’s therefore surely impossible that I had conceived five weeks earlier, BEFORE my period, EVEN if something had happened which I’m sure I would never have done and EVEN if it had and the MAP had failed.

But, I had read online that embryonic diapause (delayed development) is frequent in some mammal species and there is an article citing one possible anecdotal case in a human woman, whose egg seneed to implant five weeks after IVF transfer. It didn’t seem hugely scientifically sound to me though and is the only example I can fine, although researchers found that the same phenomenon can happen if fertilised eggs of species who do not exhibit diapause are placed in the wombs of species who do.

At around this time I began taking ubiquinol (co-enzyme Q10) and my paranoid fear is that somehow this combined with the artificial hormones in the MAP triggered a response from my uterus which led to the egg being frozen in development until it implanted six weeks later when the HCG showed on a pregnancy test.

Or - of course this is nonsense and I conceived five weeks later as normal during one of the many times partner and I DTD during my fertile window.

I KNOW rationally it’s impossible for anyone other than DP to be the father, EVEN if I’d slept with someone four weeks earlier, which I didn’t anyway!

But this thought is taking over to the point that I am in tears each day and feel like I will lose my wonderful DP. Everyone says babies look like their fathers and I can’t say our’s does - in fact I constantly analyse features against other people who were there that night previously.

If I ask for a DNA test it would of course upset my DP and I think totally unnecessarily, but I am in absolute despair not being able to lay this to rest.

Would it be worth me seeing my GP about the anxiety instead?

Thank you if anyone has managed to read all of this! Any advice gratefully received

GP to discuss this anxiety you are feeling

But also, my DC came out looking like my clone, and a few family members made -inappropriate- remarks to DH about wether he was sure it was his

Kids change so much in the first few months to a year! my baby, only now, nearly a year later is starting to resemble DH.

Basically your baby has just been squeezed down a tiny tube, and expanded at the other end, so it's not surprising that their little eyes are swollen and their faces are all puffy. Even cs babies don't really 'open out' until they get to around six weeks.

You need to see your GP. Your baby is yours but it sounds like you are having trouble bonding, so your brain is putting all sorts of excuses in your head. Everything will be fine, just get some help.

Your lovely baby is 2 weeks old. Give things time - in another month there will be more signs of him or her looking like one or both of you.

My parents gave birth to a my brother who looks nothing like them - different skin tone, hair colour etc. If you squint now he's forty, you can see he looks like his paternal grandfather, but otherwise he looks like no one in the family. It happens. I didn't resemble my parents growing up but do look more like my mum now.

Definitely go and see your gp. Anxiety is horrible.

Hiya. Google postnatal OCD, particularly "pure" OCD. I had a friend with very very similar worries and this was what she was diagnosed with. It's slightly more specific than the more common PND. It may be that you had the OCD before you were pregnant, see if it rings true when you Google it. My friend is absolutely fine now, sending you hugs xx

Congratulations on your baby. I have three sons, all three looked totally different at birth and nothing like my husband and I. I can assure you we are definitely their biological parents.

Go to the GP, your anxiety needs some help. Good luck.

We have a tiny, dainty daughter. Shes 19. Neither me or my husband are anything like tiny or dainty, but shes definitely ours.

People are strange after having children. I used to pack a complete changing bag. Spare clothes, bottle of formula in an insulated bag, nappies, wipes (because I used them for ‘travelling’ although not at home - only cooled boiled water and cotton wool was good enough for my PFB, for at least a year) for a trip to the shop. The shop was next door but one to my house (tiny shop, never a queue), and I lugged all that stuff there, for months and months and months. What was I thinking? Why didn’t someone (my mum? My husband?) tell me I was being a twat?

Try, really really try, to relax and enjoy your baby. You’re giving yourself a really hard time.

Op this time will pass, and one day you will look back on it. You can either look back on it as the time you had anxiety/PND, got yourself to the docs, got sorted and enjoyed your newborn. OR you may well feel guilty for spending possible months wrapped dup in irrational concerns.

I have been there - I know what ti is like, you will only latch onto something else to worry about.

Please go see the doctor. Good luck x

People say babies look like their parents (especially fathers) because its a socially acceptable thing to do - saying that probably became "the" appropriate thing precisely because it was important to affirm your belief the father is the father despite the fact babies all look like Winston Churchill :o

Do see your HV or GP about the anxiety, the baby is yours and your DH's. PND and other forms of post natal psychiatric distress are pretty common.

It's very unlikely a baby that young would resemble anyone at that stage. Babies don't have identifiable features until they are older. Neither of mine looked like either me or my partner until they were toddlers. So your baby could no possibly look specifically look like anyone, you, your partner, or someone from the party.

However, newborns do have lots of strange creases and folds all over their bodies and face (yes big eyelids) from, effectively, being squished up in your womb and through the birth canal in cases of vaginal delivery.

But because their faces are full of funny little features people do interpret them as 'looking like so-and-so'

could not* possibly look like anyone specific [at this stage]

your baby is too young.

Definitely speak to GP

Yes, I have OCD - the irrational thought kind - have had it since I was a kid. I’m also pregnant right now and have fixated in equal measure on a) DH not being the father and b) my baby having birth defects, usually FAS (I didn’t know until I missed my period, drank for those 2 weeks).

I second googling pure OCD and seeing if you recognise yourself.

There’s a few of us fellow sufferers floating around on the pregnancy board, turns out this fixation is an extremely common one! I’m not through it yet but all I can say is that getting a DNA test will only treat the symptoms, not the cause.

When my youngest was born I was convinced he had Down's due to his eyes, he had a difficult forceps delivery and I think this was the reason for bruised/swollen eyelids. I can remember the couple of days I was in hospital watching if midwives stopped to speak to each other and I "knew" they were discussing my baby. I was also watching my husband as I was convinced he knew but wouldn't tell me. It was the weirdest experience of my life.

Do speak to your GP.

When my nephew was born, he looked like Winston Churchill. His father is not Winston Churchill.

I agree with the others; see your doctor.

I’m a geneticist.

But, I had read online that embryonic diapause (delayed development) is frequent in some mammal species and there is an article citing one possible anecdotal case in a human woman,

This doesn’t happen in humans. Full stop.

Please go and see your GP - as soon as you can. This sounds like a massive anxiety or possible severe PND reaction. Really severe - I can’t stress that enough.

It’s physically impossible for what you’re worried about to have happened. The incident may be sparking some kind of anxiety or panic in you - and you need treatment.

I suffered from severe OCD after my first child was born - and while the content of the fears is different, the format and structure of your post really rings a bell. Please go and see someone as soon as you can ?

We were astonished when DD was born with red hair, and we got a few jokes about whether our milkman had red hair, since there were no red heads in the family. It started to darken when she was 18 months old and is now a beautiful rich chestnut brown, just like her father who has typical Italian colouring. No idea how it happened because DH had dark brown hair from birth.

Agree with everyone else, go and speak to your GP.

PS, I read an article years after I felt like this, these feelings aren't unusual. It is a thing. I tried to google the article but I couldn't find it.

I had feelings like this but I hadn't come up with such scientific explanations! You should be writing dystopian fiction OP! I was just wondering if I could have unknowingly got pregnant in a pool or off a toilet seat at waterloo station. Nothing as scientific as your brain has served up to you!

It sounds very strange that you're even slightly concerned you may have been unfaithful to your DH that night in the hotel room... has that ever happened before? I wouldn't be so quick to rule out that something happened, if you were black out drunk and woke up in a bedroom with somebody else, and then conceived shortly afterwards. Not trying to worry you, the thought is already there in your head. More trying to reassure you that if something similar happened to me I'd be terrified and wondering if something had happened after all. It's just such a coincidence and sounds like you don't have any way of knowing for sure what happened.

Just humour me - do small babies often have quite thick eyelids?

Yes :) and it’s NORMAL for them to look like one of you, both of you or neither of you. Genes are discrete units not a mishmash of blending.

Please, please go and see your GP. Big hug, I’ve been there - it’s terrifying BUT it’s tally treatable. Be kind to yourself.

because it was important to affirm your belief the father is the father despite the fact babies all look like Winston Churchil

Honestly it's enough to make you wonder about the man.. His genes seem to be floating around everywhere.

when my neice was born she looked 100% chinese. She had masses of thick straight black hair sticking straight up, very distinct Chinese looking eyes, with an eye fold, and pale skin.

My brother is blond and blue eyed and my SIL is black. She looked like an adopted baby it was that striking.
My SIL was even stopped in a shop and asked where her partner came from and the asian woman asked was really offended when my SIL was trying to explain that she didn't have and East Asian partner.

Now she looks just like bits of all of us, and her skin and hair colour are totally different, not to mention she has curly hair now, and her eyes are not like that any more either.

Just the way newborns are.

I'm really interested in the OCD posts actually as I have it too and have done all my life but was not diagnosed before having children. As I posted above I went completely stark raving a bit off and had no idea that postnatal ocd was a thing.

LImon it was 5 weeks before her dc was conceived. It absoutely could not have happened.

I mean this very gently but you really don’t sound very well, OP. Please go to your GP.

It sounds like you’ve latched on to this as something to worry about, but if you get a DNA test then what next? You’ll most likely find yourself something else to obsess over. You might even be posting here again in a few months asking how reliable DNA tests really are and whether they could have made a mistake in the testing. That’s because the DNA isn’t really the issue here, and that’s why I think you need to seek some help.

For what it’s worth, though, my sister and I looked NOTHING alike when were little and people used to ask my mum if we had the same dad. As adults we look so similar we regularly get mistaken for twins. Plus... without meaning to be rude, two-week-old babies mostly just look like, well... babies!

Good luck to you with whatever you decide.

OP you need to seek immediate help from mental health professionals - this is serious irrational anxiety. It sounds like severe PND possibly post natal psychosis? Or OCD as people say. Nothing anyone says here will help, DNA testing won't help. This isn't coming from the rational part of your mind.

People are being kind but this isn't about how your baby looks.

Please call your GP immediately and tell people close to you about what you are feeling and thinking. Look after yourself OP XX

I see FlakyToast. I wasn't sure from the dates.

Either way, even if the events of that night are unlikely to have led to conception, I wouldn't ignore your instincts that are saying something is wrong about that evening and more may have happened then you're aware of. I'm not sure what you can do at this stage other then maybe an STI screen to put your mind at rest.

Is that why you haven't drank since?