To wonder why having young children turned me into someone I don’t recognise?

[peachpearandpink]

My children are now five and two and a half and I’m slowly staring to find things getting easier and I reflect on the last five years and have so much guilt and shame.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done things ‘right’; I’ve read to them, taken them out to groups and classes and swimming lessons and park and woodland walks and soft play and duck ponds but my god I’ve been so angry for so much of it. Sometimes frustration has boiled over and I’ve shouted, a lot, on a few occasions going on a proper rant where I just haven’t stopped.

My first was born after a horrible birth, I was exhausted and passed out after (he was eventually born by EMCS) and I felt so unwell and spaced out after the birth. It was Covid, there was no support, breastfeeding was impossible to establish and I took it personally, it felt like a rejection of me and I got so frustrated with both of us. I stayed awake for hours at night expressing breast milk and I honestly think it turned me a bit mad … he had the most awful witching hours and I’d panic, would think he needed to see a doctor as he must be in pain. I remember one awful night when he was just a few weeks old driving around in the small hours and falling asleep in a layby somewhere. I got obsessed with sleep and his naps, would get all tense and angry if he didn’t nap on schedule. His sleep was very poor until we sleep trained at 18 months. Then I got the idea he was a ‘bad’ toddler because of my ‘bad’ parenting. all in all I want to go back and shake myself.

when I had dd two and a half years later things initially were much better; she was a better sleeper and I knew what to expect (plus planned section) but the stress of meeting two children’s needs (often conflicting) really got to me. I felt guilty all the time, tense all the time, the only time I’d relax is if I was driving and they both fell asleep. I got so angry about stupid stuff like once toddler ds kept walking in front of the pram or toys on the floor, potty training ds made me furious if he had an accident

I can feel myself relaxing by the minute as it’s getting easier and I just wish wish wish I could go back and be the gentle and loving person I always actually thought I was.

My heart goes out to you.
I was a terrible mother of very young children. I had two very close together, eldest undiagnosed autistic, and I felt like you describe. I did my best, took them on trips, played with them but also had occasions where I would lose my shit and shout a lot or put one / both in a room so I could cool off in another.
I felt dreadfully unsupported by my now ex-husband also.

They are now preteen/teen aged and there are still difficulties (different ones!) but my god it's so much easier overall. We get on really well, it's fun to hang out with them, I feel calm and actually enjoy being their parent. I'd say for me it got slowly easier from around the ages of 6 or 7.

I think some of us are better at certain stages than others.
I choose not to look back with guilt. I did the best I could with what I had and I'm sure you did too. They don't remember most of those years. Focus on the now, focus on giving them good memories now they are getting to the ages they will actually remember ❤️

I’m really sorry you’re feeling this way 😞
do you have a support network, partner, family, friends, other mums?

Yes it's almost like a form of PTSD really

Thank you and in particular for that kind post @fruitj

I feel so awful as I always, always loved babies. Once I outgrew dolls I’d gravitate to women with babies at church or my mums friends. I was so motherly and loving to them. To animals, too. And I just think - why did that nurturing, kind girl turn into such a bloody horror with my own babies?

@RumbleHoney yes although like a lot of things the term ‘double edged sword’ comes to mind! For example, I did the NCT course when I had ds … we all get on well, no horror stories, but I was absolutely haunted in those early days that their babies / toddlers were more advanced than ds and clearly that was because of my poor parenting meaning he hadn’t potty trained / spoken in full sentences / counted to 100. I pushed the poor thing into potty training before he was ready and got so angry when he had accidents. And of course in doing so I completely overlooked the many amazing things about ds; how he rarely if ever whinges or complains even when in pain, his courage and boldness with sports and anything physical, how he easily makes friends and keeps them. He participates and enjoys events, not one of these children who grumble and moan. But I just found I was looking for the bad, all the time, I don’t know why.

I’m so sorry you feel that way but also totally sympathise- I even posted here about losing my temper at DS while potty training! My DS was and is a much easier baby/toddler than DD and I feel a lot of guilt for how angry I am with her a lot of the time. Because she is high needs all the time, I feel like I never can relax enough to build up some patience so am constantly snappy and on edge like I never was with DS. I feel so much guilt for that, like she has a different mother to him. And also blame myself that maybe she’s difficult because I haven’t given her enough love. So I assume (hope!) these are all normal feelings and we are all just trying our best. X

I can remember worrying about my son not crawling with the other babies his age. I actually got down on hands and knees to demonstrate. I tried to move his legs to give him the idea. He eventually crawled for a week or two and the he stood up and walked. I ended up with an 11 month old who could actually sprint. (This is not a good thing because they don't have an appropriate sense of danger.) So I guess it's a case of being careful what you wish for!

I can totally empathise. DD is my eldest and generally the easiest kid and is just great but I was in a fog of PPD when she was a baby and young toddler and I lost it on more than one occasion. DS on the other hand is now 7 and still a nightmare. He is so needy and is permanently talking and moving and touching and wanting 100% attention at all times and my god it's exhausting. He has always been this way and I've always hoped he'd grow out of it but it doesn't seem to be happening yet. I can cope for a good few hours at the time and then I'm touched out and talked out and either explode or have to hide from him.

Parenting is not easy by any means and every child is different so every experience is different. Some people can never understand that their experience is not the same as yours but know the fact that you reflect and care makes you a good mum.

I was a bit like this at times and Covid with a toddler almost robbed me of my sanity.

I've deliberately slowed down our lifestyle, we do less, schedule ourselves less, refuse some invitations, stay home more, eat in front of the TV some nights, don't have baths every night, things like that. If I feel myself being triggered by my kids, I put earphones on and listen to music and think 'I can't hear you'.

It might not be perfect or even ideal but I have more energy and patience to be gentle with them, to talk to them and hug them and to tell them I love them, so I think it's a fair trade-off.

Then I got the idea he was a ‘bad’ toddler because of my ‘bad’ parenting

I remember being very cross with my then 2yo DC at a playground because it seemed to me that he was behaving much worse than my friend's (fairly placid) child (same age). He wouldn't engage with the games this child wanted to play and I felt it was so embarrassing. Looking back, they were completely different children - mine was a ball of energy who wanted to be running, jumping, swinging, and her child was more verbally advanced and into make-believe games (which my child would take longer to get into). Looking back, it makes me cringe that I was grumpy with my lovely boy for just being himself.

I wasn't the only one though. I remember having a playground meet-up with someone I'd only met a few times and both our children were hunting for sticks. Her little boy found a big one and waved it around and unfortunately hit my child in the face (luckily no harm done). She absolutely lost it with him (his behaviour had been challenging), and pulled him aside and shouted at him "no one will like you if you don't play nicely. You're violent and no one will play with you'. He was too little really to understand. It turned out later than she was having a really tough time with everything - work, her partner, finances. We come across them occasionally and she obviously has a great relationship with her son, who has grown into a lovely boy.

Awww small children can send you crazy. This is just a phase..your school age children will be totally different and then your teens different again. You have to be much more than one type of parent. You will need more skills and you keeping changing and learning as it goes (and you never stop being surprised !) So dont stress. And you never think you have done enough..the guilt is baked in. Be kind to yourself.

I’m so grateful for these kind replies.

@rose88xx my dd definitely has a different mother to my ds I love him so much, I don’t know why there’s so much irritation and anxiety with him. With dd I am so kinder and more patient, I sit and do puzzles with her and play dolls … I don’t know what was wrong with me when ds was a toddler, I wish I could go back and be so much kinder

I think sometimes and the replies here have been so helpful so thank you for that … but you know some of the MN threads about toddlers that go a bit haywire about how dare they wake early and why would you tolerate this and why would you have them do that - I think that got in my head too. I remember getting so angry with ds at a pumpkin patch once; the poor thing wasn’t even two then.

Yes that external pressure can really get to you sometimes. That's another thing I have learned, is to really really try and ignore all the external noise and just to do what suits us as a family.

I think I had undiagnosed postnatal depression. It can often manifest as anger or anxiety or a mixture. And it takes "coming out of it" to recognise what a difficult time you had because of it. Again, please be kind to yourself. You can't go back, but maybe it would help you to unpack some of this with a counsellor? So that you can then go forwards into a new era of parenting x

It would, although money is very tight at the moment. I could maybe afford it in a couple of months, though.

OP my mum lost her shit quite a lot when we were kids and used to get mad. And I genuinely believe she’s a great mum, that I had a brilliant childhood and I love her so much.

And I don’t think it did me any harm. Life’s full of unpredictable and often angry people, an occasional peep at that earlier on isn’t a bad thing in my opinion.

I am absolutely convinced the experience of (unsupported) motherhood is identical to experiencing abuse and nobody wants to talk about it. In many cases it leads to CPTSD and the biggest conspiracy is that women happily "forget" how hard it was and romanticise the experience in their own memory and to others.

The most obvious disclaimer is that children are not abusers and do not wilfully inflict emotional damage. However the reality of parenting overlaps with countless elements of emotional and physical abuse that are simply unavoidable through the sheer sense of responsibility that comes with being a good mother.

Someone convince me how experiencing these things over many years doesn't equate to trauma or torture:

-Total sleep deprivation
-Being woken at all hours with screaming or crying and never knowing for certain how long will be allowed to sleep
-Having your own needs being met last all the time
-Being forced to accept that your own feelings and physical sensations are not important and must be pushed aside for the wellbeing of others.
-Forcing fake happiness even when you're tired and breaking inside
-Never getting a break when you need it
-Nobody recognising when you need a break and offering it to you
-Regularly reaching to the point when you feel you might snap but having to push past it through sheer willpower or disassociation.
-Regularly being forced to ignore hunger, thirst or toilet breaks because you simply don't have the time
-Never being allowed to rest when ill or in pain
-Constant overstimulation with noise and mess
-Never being able to do something without being interrupted
-Not having time or energy to care for yourself and essentially being forced to neglect basic self care, hygiene and diet
-Spending hours every day engaged in pointless sisyphean tasks like cleaning up floors that get dirty while you're wiping
-Being gaslit into believing that the tiny crumbs of help other people give you must be enough to fully recharge your body and soul. (For other serious MH conditions, people are allowed to prioritise themselves fully in a rehab program or clinic for as along as they need. CPTSD in mothers is expected to disappear because you get one lie-in every 6 weeks or a spa voucher once a year)
-The forced happiness seems to be most toxic. Having to always look happy for the kids, put on a sing song voice and never exposing your true feelings.

The problem is that abusive parents are exactly those who train their children not to place those demands on them, and essentially reversing parentification roles. In a healthy family, the mother shields her children from all negativity including her own feelings and state of mind. She's the one who absorbs all the mess, anger, resentment and chaos from the environment so her children grow up in bliss with all their needs met. If you do it right, you cannot survive without some level of CPTSD.

Oh op i live with mum guilt every day. Not taking ds to hospital when he bumped his head, saving milk in one breast so I could express for the evening when I should have rotated more. (90th centile so he was fine) Shouting and being snappy. I blame myself for ds being autistic. He does not sleep. Example was up from 12 till 5am last night and we work full time and ds has school and trust me, I hate 4am version of me every day. Were all human, we all make mistakes, we can all be lazy (or just tired) we're all in this together ❤️

@Helplessandheartbroke i honestly don’t know how you cope. It isn’t even that bad here. Ds was a bloody nightmare but in the scheme of things eighteen months is nothing … and dd has never been a ‘bad’ sleeper.

Just now she’s getting easier but she does have some big feelings, she’s mostly dropped her nap so it’s long day to fill and she’s taken to dragging me around by one finger which really annoys me lol … I am more patient this time round. But my poor little boy

Be kind to yourself. A lot of what you said resonates for me.

Parenting can be so so hard especially when you are so tired and layered with guilt as all you can think is how much you love the small person causing it all and feeling like you aren't doing it well.

It's funny as my DCs now love to look at photo memories on my phone of when they were under 5 and ask me questions about what was happening. None of them really remember any of it in any detail. All the times I did fancier days out or made them birthday cakes exactly how they wanted it even though I'm a dreadful baker are in my memories not theirs. (They are aged 7 to 11).

It's easier to get the small breaks to reset the emotions as they get older too which helps me.

I did enjoy some of the time when they were little but I find it easier to really enjoy their company now even if I wish I had been less grumpy in the past!

Are you different towards them now?

If not, you could be suffering from depression. Not coping can show as anger - usually aimed at your loved ones. Speak to the doctor and say ‘you’re not coping’ and they’ll prescribe you something to help ease your day-to-day.

I should add ds is almost 6 too. Exhaustion brings out the worse in people and its can't be helped were not infallible.

You're ds is fine. You do things with him, care for him and love him. Maybe dd got lucky that you were subconsciously not wanting to repeat some past errors shall we say.

Someone up thread made a valid point of all the things we sacrifice. Your ds is not neglected, he is loved and looked after. Us mums take on the world. Be kind to yourself.

I don’t think it is healthy to shield your children from all negativity. Children need to experience ruptures in relationships, to know relationships can be repaired, they need to know that sometimes their behaviour will be annoying, and people will be irritated by them, to feel disappointment and frustration. Otherwise they never learn to cope with other people’s feelings, or indeed their own. They don’t learn to move forward, that anxiety and other difficult feelings can be tolerated and that those feelings pass in time.

Its an impossible standard to expect parents (mothers) to never show negative feelings and to shield kids from stuff that doesn’t feel
positive. Completely unrealistic and actually quite unhealthy.

Why would you be responsible for DS being autistic?

Mostly @Obscurity . I have the odd moment mostly when dd is crying and whining and ds is just incessantly talking where I snap but I’m better at recognising when I’m getting to that point and trying to remove myself from the situation.

Generally though this year ds started school and not having two kids for most of the day has hugely helped. But then I didn’t have dd when ds was 0-2.5 so I don’t know?

Ye sounds daft I know. I had ocd and blame myself for everything really. Logically I know I didnt

No good mother looks back and can see nothing she thinks she could have done better. We all feel like that. Just always try to do your best and it will come alright in the end.