Can you love your baby or child but not want to live with them

[CheerfulOddity]

I'm wondering if perhaps there was some pnd involved for a mum, could you love your baby and then the child they grow into, but really feel smothered by them and not want them to live with you?

Even if you then go on to have more children who you do live with?

Can and manifest in a subtle way where one doesn't feel depressed in an obvious sense, but just wants to leave the baby?

The audio book link if anyone wants to listen to it.www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/b04n9h44

I didn’t have PND but do struggle with parenting. After I had my children I struggled with the realisation of how enormous the responsibility is. I don’t like being a parent at all. I love my children, they’re are each amazing in their own way; each of them funny, smart, sensitive and caring.
They are better people than I will ever be but if I could go back knowing what I know now I wouldn’t have become a mother.
This is something I squash down inside me as much as possible and try to be the best mum I can because my children didn’t ask to be born and deserve and present mum who showers them with love and supports and guides them. I’m sorry your own mum couldn’t do that for you. It’s not fair to effectively punish our children for the choices we made.

There are a lot of apologists here. Nobody does this for the men who walk away. I found it easier to deal with the fact that my mother didn't want me, care about me or love me, when I stopped making excuses for her. She didn't have PND, she didn't have seagulls parents herself, she didn't have mental health problems. What she had was could give a fuck about any one but herself itits. That stands to this day. I'm completely broken by her lack of interest and she is out there living her best life.

Sometimes, just sometimes, there is no excuse.

She didn't have awful parents, not seagulls

[quote Prudencia]The audio book link if anyone wants to listen to it.www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/b04n9h44[/quote]

Thanks for this link, I will listen to it later

I think PND can definitely make you not want to be around your baby…but for it to persist all throughout childhood I don’t think it can be attributed just to that.

I had an extremely traumatic birth of DD, and then PND. For the first 3 months I didn’t want her, just went through the motions but felt nothing. If I could have run away I would have, without a second thought. If I’d left then I don’t know where we would be today. I would BF her then try and give her to someone else to hold asap, just didn’t want her on me. Tried to avoid her.

Started to recover and now we have the best relationship, she’s 19mo and I’m a SAHM and adore her, would do anything for her. I wasn’t well and I wasn’t thinking straight. But if I’d left when I’d wanted to, I really really don’t know what would have happened.

No, not love in the true sense of the word. Whether that’s because of PND is neither here nor there really.

Love is incredibly complex and people can be damaged. Yes I do think it's completely possible. However I'm not sure if that love would matter a great to me if I were the child. There are plenty of non resident parents but you assume they'd like residency full time. At least I assume that the children assume this.

@ClemDanFango That’s a really honest post and the responsibility of it all is totally crushing.

Well if you want out of a relationship then that can quite often mean that you wont be living with your children full time, esp if you are a man. Doesnt mean that you dont live them.

Other than that, yes I think that some people's mh means that they love their kids but cant cope with being a parent.

And then there are those selfish arseholes who say they "love" their kids - as long as this translates into having little to do with them and certainly nothing that gets in the way of their own lives and desires.

My SIL got serious post-natal chemical imbalances which led to extreme anxiety and basically panicking whenever in room with her baby. She loved her dd but couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her.

Luckily “the system worked” for SIL, midwives referred her, she was briefly sectioned and then given a course of drugs that completely fixed her 😱 and all was fine, this was a few years ago and she had no other problems except needing a course of the same drugs whenever she had a new baby.

She is very grateful to the medical staff who referred and helped her and we are both pretty amazed by what drugs can achieve when they’re correctly prescribed.

I wonder if your mum needed help that she didn’t get 😔

If I had got pregnant very young I would not have felt anything for the baby I don’t think.
I used to have dreams where I had a baby and all I wanted to do was run away. This wouldn’t have been the baby’s fault of course - but it probably would have grown up with a hole in their heart like you have, OP.
One comment I would make though is that if, as a more mature adult, I was not prepared to sit down and he truly honest with the child about my feelings and motivations at the time, to truly listen and address all questions, and to profusely apologise for how I had behaved, then end of all excuses, that would mean I was a shitty human being.

I'm sorry your mother wasn't there for you as a child, having that feeling of rejection from a young age must really hurt.

My mum probably had PND but back then it wasn't really diagnosed or treated properly. She didn't abandon me but was not particularly nice to me for a lot of my childhood. I wonder if having a break from me would have helped her. Imagine telling a toddler that they 'constantly screamed' as a baby to the point that you wanted to throw them out the window. I barely said a word til I was 11 as I was scared to make too much noise.

[quote CheerfulOddity]@ididntevennotice I am so sorry to read about your experience. I hope your therapy helps you.

Did you ever have contact in person with your mum?[/quote]
Did she have you very young, OP? Or was there something else in her life that was particularly difficult?

I ask because I can see a teen mum (not saying they would!!) finding parenting particularly hard because teenagers’ brains aren’t fully developed yet. And I would imagine being a teen mum would be incredibly difficult for most.

@MondaysChild7

If there’s no mental illness involved then I find it quite unlikely that a loving parent is one who doesn’t want to live with their child.

But the sort of people who abandon one brood of children, then go elsewhere and have another different brood and forget about the first children are usually not capable of loving anyone in the true sense. And are incredibly selfish. This applies to men as well as women.

I'd agree with this! I'd imagine the rejected, abandoned child would as well. I can imagine how devastatingly painful it would be to be this child too and that the abandoner going on to have other children whom they stayed with would make the pain even more hard to bear, adding insult to injury. I imagine such a child will suffer into adulthood and need therapy. TBH, my only sympathy would be for the abandoned child!