To say being a new mum sucks

[needliferaft]

Just this. Have a four week old, basically feel like a milk cow, feel like my life is small, lonely, unattractive and like I'll never be myself again.

I live in UK, moved here with partner from my home country (US), no family of my own, no friends of my own. I'm not adjusting to living here very well. No offence intended, its just been hard and isolating.

Will it get better? How do I deal with being a new mum and not have a breakdown.

Sounds really hard op.
Yanbu at all. I felt the same and you have a couple of extra challenges!
Is your partner supportive and understanding?
Try to get out and about and find some local groups.
Your baby will start smiling soon and that is a brilliant silver lining. You wont feel this way forever but the first few months with your first baby... I dont know what it is...time really slowed down for me, it was such an odd time. All good now though. Please be kind to yourself, reach out etc. Would u be willing to say what area you're in in case others on here live near you and fancy a coffee?

It’s very, very hard OP. I desperately struggled in those first 6-8 weeks. I’d had a traumatic birth and couldn’t sit or stand or walk or urinate or do anything comfortably. He breastfed around the clock (incredibly painfully, I needed to use nipple shields). His cries made me anxious. I couldn’t even get 5 minutes away from him to have a shower. I remember googling ‘I hate my baby’. My DH wasn’t taken with him either. I thought I’d ruined our lives. It was all utterly brutal. And all that was without a pandemic, lockdown and being in a new country.

He is now 1. And he is the absolute light of both our lives and we think becoming parents was the best thing that has even happened to us. So things do change. I promise you.

No shame in needing to use formula. We also had a bottle refuser. I eventually had success by lying DS on his back and squirting milk in his mouth with a calpol syringe. He then seemed to accept that milk could come from a source other than the breast. I then replaced the syringe with a bottle (had the most luck with the cheapest bottles from boots, they’re like £2.99 for 3 or something). I know it isn’t advised to feed them lying flat but it worked.

Do you have a sling? The ergobaby worked wonders for us, once I’d healed from the birth it allowed me to go out for long walks with him while he slept in the sling (he was the kind of baby that would never be put down) and getting out and taking exercise did wonders for my mental health.

Best of luck OP. You will get through this. You’ve already come a really long way and it does get better from here.

Also, I hope you haven’t taken that post about being grateful for a baby because some people are suffering from infertility to heart. The fact that some people suffer from infertility doesn’t erase the realities of new motherhood, and it especially doesn’t erase post-natal depression - in fact I understand that women who’ve had fertility problems (as you did) are at greater risk of PND and PNA, for obvious reasons, so actually the whole ‘gratitude’ narrative is really dangerous and damaging all round.

@IdblowJonSnow thanks everyone for all the replies, sometimes it just helps to have contact. I'm in TW11 xx

@Monkeynuts18 thanks for the advice on bottle refusal, we saw someone who gave us advice that the best way was to only offer a bottle for 24 hours. Basically starve her into submission, it feels so so cruel. 😢

I really didn't enjoy the baby stages much, just really struggled with the sleep deprivation as I was doing every single night by myself due to the breastfeeding. If some formula helps then definitely do that. Once mine were four months ish I also moved more to scheduled breastfeeding which I rarely see mentioned as an option but certainly worked for me once they were out of the teeny tiny newborn stage. I didn't stick rigidly to some theoretical schedule but had a loose routine of feeds.