To ask you to tell me about when you’ve experienced ‘mother’s intuition’?

[Tryagainplease]

Sort of inspired by the fascinating matrix thread.

What stories do you have of your intuition telling you something about your child(ren)?

I don’t have any majorly weird ones but I still find it so weird that I just know when DS is going to be ill before he even shows any symptoms. Quite a few times I’ve brought calpol and a bowl up to bed knowing full well he is going to get a fever and be sick even though there are absolutely no reasons for me to think this. DH even finds it a bit weird still as he doesn’t get this even though he is very close to DS also.

I have it every day and have since they were born.

It’s like there is some strange psychic link between us, I can tell within seconds if they are struggling with something or if they are ill.

It’s one of the best things about being a mum - having this indescribable connection with someone else. It’s the best and most profound relationship you have in your life and because it is that, I know it must be hell to lose a child and I despair for any mother who has had to experience the loss of a child

Nothing big thankfully but I’ve always been right when I’ve worried about her being ill. Once knew something was up, she had a light rash and I called the GP with a certainty she needed to be seen. The rash was nothing but she had a chest infection and needed urgent antibiotics. No signs at all, not a single cough which was why we didn’t know but also why it wasn’t shifting. The GP was so nice, he asked what was wrong and I just said she’s ill but apart from the rash I don’t know what’s wrong. He looked straight at my and said mums know and to always get her seen if I was concerned.

On way to nursery and I remembered I didn't put any spare trousers in his bag, thinking to myself I know he'll come out with someone else's on.
He did.
Never previously needed pants changed.

I've known when Dd1 has needed me.
I don't know how but if she's in trouble or has a major problem, I just know.
I knew to drive to her university one random day. She needed me. I don't know how I knew, I just did.

Definitely happens.

With first born I had an urge to check on him during the night despite him being silent. Looked in his Moses basket and he was laying on his back, blue lipped and choking on some spit up.

Once I was at work and I had an overwhelming urge that something wasn’t right with the toddler at the childminders - she was also a great friend who I trusted. Anyway something told me not to call her but to leave work NOW and get him and to never send him back. I drove to the childminder’s house and there was a child she looked after playing on the side of a busy road outside her house. Not my son (he was strapped inside in a highchair with an apple and completely unattended), but all my instincts screamed not safe. Childminder had a friend over and was sitting in their lounge having coffee and cake :-( another child (about 9 months old was alone on the stairs). Unfortunately I reported to OFSTED and she was investigated, hadn’t kept records adequately etc so got told off, but the other parent’s of children she looked after all turned on me as they no longer had child care arrangements while she was being investigated and had to cease childminding. That was clearly more important to them than their child’s safety. :-(

Another time, slightly different. I was driving with my two babies in the car along a single track winding road, just before harvest so the fields were full of tall crops so you could barely see. I had an urge to brake but ignored the urge and kept going at the same speed (not speeding but at the speed limit). Anyhow a CD ejected from the CD player really forcefully that it shot out and onto the gear stick. As that happened the shock of it made me brake hard and as I was braking a really fast van appeared in front of me, screeching on his brakes. I know if I hadn’t slowed to an almost stop we would have had a head on.

I knew my dd1 was of before she told me, I actually text her sister to get her opinion minutes before

Knew my baby would be premature. Can explain how but I KNEW.

When I was 30wks my mum had a 5 week long trip away planned. I begged her not to go 'you'll still have another month to go once I get back' she said.
I insisted she was wrong.

DD was born 9 days later.
'

I met my husband at school but we were never more than friends until our late 20s. My sister told me after our engagement that my mum had secretly said for 10+ years that we'd end up together.

My mum had it with me once. She kept trying to get up to see to me in my cot because she thought she could hear me coughing, I wasn’t but our house was being burgled and my family and I were being sprayed with a drug that makes you sleepy.

Fascinating to read your experiences. I am a ftm to a 6 month old and I think I'm starting to be aware of her feelings on a deeper level than I anticipated. Will be interesting to see what develops from that.

When my DS was 4 months old, I suddenly jerked awake in the night with a really horrid feeling in the pit of my stomach. He was fast asleep but his breathing just didn’t sound right. I tried to wake him and couldn’t, called an ambulance and was talked through ways to wake him before the ambulance got here. Just as they arrived, his eyes opened (a good 10 minutes or so). It was the scariest experience of my life and the specialist paediatric doctor we saw that night said that it was almost certainly a near miss cot death.
Somehow I knew to wake up but if I hadn’t, we would likely have woken in the morning and he’d have been gone.
I thank my lucky stars every day for him, he’s 5 now and the best human being on the planet!

I picked out the thing my child was allergic to from an array of about 20 possibilities. We hadn't done any tests or experiments to find out, and it could have been any of those things (mixed/combined meals etc). I just knew in my gut what it was, and then we did all the experiments and isolating specific foods and funnily enough, it was the one I'd said.

I think it works the other way too.

One day I was walking from the train to my office. I suddenly "knew" I had to phone my Mum. This was an odd thing to do. I can only recall one time when I was phoned at work by a family member. It just wasn't what my family would do.

I phoned my Mum and asked how she was. She'd found out half an hour ago that her sister had died.

I'll never forget that feeling, that imperative, that I should/needed to phone her.

My DD is great at masking, when she's upset (she's a regional manager, and sometimes it's required of her). But I can always tell. It's the way she holds herself I think

My mum once guessed I'd had an abortion when I was younger. I only spoke to her on the phone just after I had it, didn't even see her in person, and she just knew. Still to this day I have no idea how she knew, but I can never have secrets from my mum as she always seems to know!

I always wake up a few minutes before they call for me in the night. As babies, I'd wake before they woke and started crying for a feed.

I thought dc1 was deaf when I was pregnant- no family history of hearing problems or anything to suggest it, just kind of had a feeling.
I now have 2 deaf dc

I KNEW DS's personality before he was born. I know, I know. But the way and times he kicked and moved, the things he responded to - I predicted what he would be like, and he is, to the letter, the boy I thought he would be.

Can also "smell" illness

Often wake up in the night and drag him back from the edge of the bed just as he's about to fall (he's 5 and still cosleeping with me....)

Catch him/intercept him/redirect him JUST as he's about to have an accident

It works both ways though. DS often responds to very specific things I've thought but not said out loud - that's sometimes a bit creepy.

Oh Caesious how terrifying. Thank goodness you woke up.

Oh and when DS was a baby, he was often in and out of hospital (we had a horrible year of bronchiolitis, RSV, and then chronic tonillitis and he would regularly spike fevers of 40/41/42...)

I could tell his temperature to .1 or .2 of a degree, just by kissing his forehead.

It became my A&E "party trick" for the nurses....

Like others have said, I can always see when DC is about to be ill, it's the eyes that give it away.

When my first DC was 6 or 7 weeks old, we were in a very busy family pub full of lots of babies/young children and families that was screening a loud sports event. I was at the bar whilst my DH had the baby some way away across the noisy pub. DC started crying and it was like a film sound effect when all other sound muted out and all I could hear was the distinct crying of my child. It felt like the bar staff moved in slow motion whilst all of my insides were screaming at me to get to the baby (who was being perfectly looked after by their dad). That one experience really shifted my perspective on nature/nurture, it was so visceral.

My mum had a weird one with me. I had a nightmare that I got attacked with a knife by my crazy ex (he’s an actual psychopath). I was running away from him because he was chasing me and finally I ran to my DM’s house, thinking I’d be safe. I hammered on the door and instead of my DM answering, crazy ex did, standing there with the knife in his head and an evil look in his eyes. The same night I had that nightmare, my DM also had a nightmare about him and it woke her up, she was so freaked out that she went downstairs and got a big knife and put it under her pillow.

In seven years I honestly don't think I've ever had a single moment of mother's intuition above and beyond common sense. Surely I'm not the only one?? I feel a bit left out

I'm the mum of a severely disabled boy. I know when he's ill....I know if I should worry or not....the Dr's are now starting to trust me.....is it mums intuition or just that I do know my sin better than anyone else.
We've been sen home many times and then they've found something g serious in bloods...recently a urine dip came back normal but it grew pseudomonas..... I just knew!

Ds shut dcat in the fridge accidentally I literally stopped what I was doing ran past him wandering out the kitchen and yanked the door open to get the cat out he was nowhere in sight when he closed the door I technically had to cross two rooms to get to the fridge and my cat didn't meow once

Gave ds directions to pick something up from the other room (told them it's on your left no YOUR OTHER LEFT!) Caught him many times from impossible angles eldest ds finds it fascinating if I catch him like how did you know to turn around like that!

Smelling sickness is absolutely a thing

My daughter (then 5) was poorly two years ago. Typical viral symptoms but I just knew something wasn't right. I took her to three different doctors who all sent her away saying it was viral. I tried arguing with them and telling them she needed abx but they wouldn't have it.

One afternoon after being ill for around two weeks she was just flopped on the sofa and completely out of it. Not responding to me. Called an ambulance and she was taken to A&E where she was diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia caused by an untreated chest infection and had to be put on IV antibiotics. She recovered thankfully but now has permanent scarring on her lungs.