Overwhelmed with new baby - please tell me it's normal to feel like this

[neuroticlady]

Our baby is just over a week old. My DH and I are in a state of shock, I think. Everyone warns you what hard work it is but the reality has hit in a way we never expected and, if I am honest, we are both looking at each other and questioning why we had him. We both have had difficulty admitting this to each other but at least we're talking to each other about it. What makes it worse is that this is very much a 'wanted' baby - we went through years of trying before he came along. It makes how we feel so much worse to deal with.

Baby is currently screaming and we can't work out why, we're both exhausted and feeling pretty miserable, the house is a tip, our old lives look pretty good right now. Please can someone tell me they had similar feelings and that it will get better....? Thank you from a stressed new mum and dad!

I haven't read all of the thread. To the op;

It's like you are describing me and DH for the first few weeks. It can be horrendous can't it.
When DH went back to work I sat down and burst in to tears and thought to myself, 'what the hell have I got myself in to, why did I think I could cope with a baby'. The feeling goes though. Everyone I spoke to about it said it all gets better at about 6 weeks or so, I didn't believe them, but it really did.

The nights get better.
The crying gets less.
The baby starts to smile which makes you melt.
The guilt starts to get less.

DO NOT worry about the state of you house it matter not a jot, just hold and cuddle your new baby, it will be all alright. I bet You are wonderful parents. So good that you are communicating about how you feel.

Thank you ninedragons for the support re: breastfeeding disaster. Yes, I absolutely feel like I need to be given permission to stop. Wish you were here too!

nappynoonoo, you and so many other have said the same thing - it DOES get better. I have to start believing it and calming down. I'm starting to get on DH's nerves after he's been so supportive and the last thing I need is to start rowing with him

HOWEVER - at last I can put a here as I've just been for a walk around the block with the dogs and DH and I bumped into three neighbours and chatted to them and have come back home feeling (if even temporarily) SO MUCH LESS fragile and more like me. DH has gone out for takeaway and I am about to give baby his first bath on my own - a big landmark! Oh it's small steps but it helps, doesn't it?

Please keep posting to me, I can't begin to tell you how much you are all helping me. Am off to GPs this week to talk.

With love x

neuroticlady - will do - she is a fair way north herself - without giving too much away, sort of near turramurra / st ives. might be a couple of days though as I think she's away at the moment!

hang in there!

ps if you use the CAT function to email me, I can respond directly by email (assuming you don't want to post your email address)

neuroticlady i have just read your original post and it bought tears to my eyes. My dd is 19 months old but it feels like yesterday that I came home with her from hospital and spent the next 3 weeks in tears. It was truly the most horrendous shock, i used to sob when dp left for work "please take me with you please don't leave me!"....I had no family around me and dp was back at work when dd was 6 days old (i was very overdue, and he had no choice but to go in to the office and take paternity leave a few weeks later).....but I would say by week 4 I was doing much better - much more confident and the hormones were settling down. My lifesaver was getting out and about and meeting up with others in the same boat. Find post natal groups, go to baby clinics (don't know how it works in Oz but some of the clinics where i am in london have drop-in health visitor clinics where you can sit and chat with other mums), go out shopping and find the baby change/feeding rooms in department stores - i spent many a happy afternoon feeding and chatting to other mums in Selfridges or Mothercare on Oxford Street!!!!! It will get better and better - every few weeks things change and you look back and think, Wow, wish I'd known that phase wouldn't last forever!!!! I used to walk around in the early days looking wistfully at pregnant women wishing I could just have stayed pregnant for ever......I had such a wonderful pregnancy and the baby at the end of it was a really huge shock (how naive!)....

Sounds like you are doing great already n-lady. I'm telling for the the first week we operated on a 4 hourly basis - DH would sleep. I would sit and cry hold the baby, trying to feed. Then I would sleep, only to be woken up horrendously 4 hours later by DH to feed again. I honestly couldn't have told the difference between 4 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon.

For what it's worth if you want to continue bfing I found it pretty awful for the first few weeks (well, months) but am now still feeding 7.5 month old DD (and actually enjoying it). There is loads of support here, no bfing police or anything, just lots of advice and support. Or if you don't want/can't continue it might be worth putting a post up for reassurance that it's not the worst thing in the world. You sound much better. It's not bad if you are not enjoying it at the moment. The first few weeks are awful. It's punishment for 20 odd years of being selfish and only having to think about yourself!

For now, if you manage to even clean your teeth at least once a day at the moment you are doing fantastically. Try and take some time to have a nice bath. It's a rollercoaster of emotions isn't it?!

oh I have just read all this you POOR thing

I could have written a lot of your post 3 years ago when DD was born (my parents were here but went back to NZ when she was a few months old and I was devastated). I was SO anxious, I never really recovered from the shellshock of the birth and the first few weeks and did end up with PND - I thought I was going utterly loopy. Went a bit like that this time round with DS, had him in NZ and freaked out after the birth at not having any friends here etc. - but this time I knew what I had to do AND he was a much easier baby than DD.

you have had such great advice and such heartfelt posts. SMALL STEPS - that is EXACTLY it, very sensible of you to identify that.

one thing - you need to find some other sympathetic new mothers to hang out with if at all possible (i.e. not ones who make you feel crap - although bear in mind that a fair proportion of the ones you think are coping brilliantly actually aren't at all, you're all just trying to keep up appearances ). but if you CAN'T, then they're all here on mumsnet anyway

legalalian, sorry to be thick but I don't know how to CAT or what it is...

This gets better, love. It really does. In 2 months time you will be flying through your day.

god this is so much more common than I ever, ever thought. All you ever hear is how wonderful it is. I honestly thought I was a monster for feeling the way I do. I am so grateful to every one of you for sharing your stories and making me realise I am not alone or a loony for feeling the way I do. MrsJohnCusack, how I identify with you re your parents leaving and feeling devastated. Mine are coming out for five weeks in two weeks time and I already start to fill up with tears thinking about them leaving again. I think we must plan a trip back home to England soon after to keep me going. And you and countryhousehotel are right - the key is getting out there and meeting other sympathetic mums. I feel so much better tonight just for having got out of the house for half an hour and bumping into some neighbours. We weren't meant to do this shut away from the world in our houses, it's all wrong.

Bumperlicious, I felt for you but had to smile ironically at the image of you in tears doing your 4 hour shift with your DH. I already refer to the dreaded overnight shift (my one) as the 'graveyard' shift and while I am dreading it again tonight (already dark outside, keep calm, keep calm) I feel more able to cope for having poured all this out here on mumsnet and for getting such an amazing response from you all. It makes me realise how this aspect of parenthood is just not talked about enough, or at all. Thank you for being absolute lifesavers.

Oh well, better hit the bath and then bed before it's my shift...

'Can I ask, for those of you who did end up being diagnosed with PND, what was done to help you?'

I was offered counselling and ADs. I tried the counselling and didn't click into it. My experience of PND was that it mainly stemmed from anxiety (unhappiness at work and a few pretty standard scares during pregnancy) which then got ratcheted up madly by tiredness/hormones. It sounds like counselling might, however, be very fruitful for you, bcs of all the sh*t you've been through with the breast cancer etc, if PND turns out to apply in your case.

The ADs were marvellous. I was on them for 9 mths, came off slowly and with no side-effects, and now it all feels very distant (until I read posts like yours. Oh God, those terrible mood , that 'spiral of negativity'. That is so familiar.)

I found the diagnosis a huge relief, actually. It made me look harder at my life and I am so much happier now -- and conscious of it, which is just so valuable.

The thing you have to hold onto is that you will not always feel like this (whatever the reason for it). Promise.

Neuroticlady - I'm so glad you went for your walk with the dogs. It does make things seem more normal doesn't it.

Like your ds, our dd was a much wanted, long waited for baby. I had a picture in my mind of the perfect mother I was going to be. I spent two and a half years dreaming, wishing, imagining and building that picture. Obviously, the reality was never, ever going to match.

The second I saw my daughter, I think I felt shock. Pure and simple shock.

I struggled with brestfeeding too, and gave up after a month as it was severely affecting my ability to bond with dd. I began dreading her waking up because I knew that I would have to feed her.

I can honestly say that it took at least 2 months before I started to really bond with her. Up until then, I put on a really good show for everyone else of being a devoted, doting mother. She was always beautifully dressed, my house was clean and tidy and I baked cakes every time someone came round. Inside I was falling apart. It wasn't until I began to accept that this was just a different life - not the ideal life, or the perfect life that I began to relax around dd and really become her mother, rather than her carer.

The one thing I wish I'd done, was talk to someone about how I felt about stopping up breastfeeding. Even now, almost 3 and a half years on, I still feel a sense of loss and bereavement. I can only imagine the feelings you are wrestling with re. breast feeding and breast cancer. Do you feel that your breasts had "let you down" somehow with the cancer, and have now done it again by not letting you breastfeed?

Could your GP refer you to someone to talk to about this - maybe one of the cancer support groups or breastfeeding support groups in Oz?

Keep going, but give yourself a break. You don't need to be the perfect parent. You just need to be good enough.

oh yes PND
same as MyEye really - anxiety made much worse by a colicky baby, lack of sleep and hormonal overload plus I was made redundant, so was DH, bla bla bla
the counselling I had was good but TBH I don't think I particularly needed it. the ADs worked an absolute treat thought, sorting out my mood to a copable baseline level from which i could function, and spiral into hysteria in 2 seconds flat like I was doing before I went on them. came of them gradually a year later when I was pregnant again. I didn't start them until DD was aroun 8 months old, I WISH I'd done it sooner as I do feel I missed out on a fair few of the early months as I was in such a flat spin.

god I think you're doing brillantly, you've had loads to cope with, you're separated from family/friends (this is so hard) plus now you have that patented life changing trauma, a BABY!

just keep talking to DH like you are doing. I recently saw some photos of us when DD was a few weeks old and OMG we look like death. It was truly hideous - but you know it DOES get better

oh FFS
I mean and not spiral into hysteria

ninedragons, i am a bit disappointed that in order to support neuroticlady you have had a bash as people who support breastfeeding. a lot of women who have come on this thread to support NL are also breastfeeders and they have spent an inordinate amount of their own time on MN and elsewhere providing appropriate support for those who want to successfully breastfeed and have given a compassionate ear and useful counsel to the many who have struggled and not succeeded with breastfeeding. to use phrases like 'boob fascist' insults the efforts of people who try to provide unbiased support to bf and ff alike on this forum. It attempts to justify grief and pain by putting others in a bad light. It also undermines the everyone like NL who read your post as they are then less likely to seek genuine support to overcome what is a time of unnecessary anxiety and grief for not having the right support from the health professionals whose remit it should be to provide it.

You may not have noticed that I have already posted a link to the Australian association for breastfeeding support. I think it is a good place for NL to start to seek support because supporting breastfeeding is not only about breastfeeding, it is also about coming to terms with the loss of that relationship for whatever reason. From NL's posts, she has very complicated emotional and possibly physiological reasons for being in the position she is in at the moment and speaking to someone on a 1 to 1 basis is probably better than off the cuff remarks any one of us can make on a messageboard. For msgboards have their limitations. A true supporter of mothers which I think she will find within that association will not demean the choices of others to make her feel better.

there was a time on MN when there was a bf/ff dingdong about every other week with a lot of misguided choice of words on both 'sides' of the debate and a lot of hurt and perceived slights where none were intended. Since then through very painstaking efforts by many the discourse have been one more of understanding on both 'sides'. It would not be a good thing for MN return to those bad old days because everyone loses out in the long run.

NL, I am sorry that I have hijacked your thread. It is not my intention to do so. I will not return to this post again.

9dragons, I hope you understand where I am coming from. I know your intentions were to support NL, it is just that I feel it would be better if she sources support from those who are better trained to support her in these issues, if and when she finds it convenient or necessary to do so.

Gosh totally normal. Firstly the hormones are over-whelming and secondly it is hard for the first few weeks. Try and get out of the house as much as possible, I found this really helpful. Also, and I didn't believe anyone who told me this, it does definitely get easier at 6 weeks.

Well, if you re-read my post you'll notice that I specifically refrained from referring to the people who post on the BF threads here as "boob fascists". They seem to really know their stuff and be genuinely supportive and balanced. I said breastfeeding web sites because some of the ones I looked at were horrifically judgmental about women who chose to FF, and said things like "all women can breastfeed", which is bullshit.

Like it or not, not everyone who has an opinion about the superiority of breastfeeding IS a trained compassionate health professional. I didn't imply that everyone who supports breastfeeding is a boob fascist, but some certainly are.

I don't think you have done the OP any service by hopping on your high horse, to be perfectly blunt. I thought it would be apparent that I don't actually believe that the Khmer Rouge run Nestle and that I was trying to make a woman who is in a very dark place crack a smile.

neurotic lady - can i just tell you something that really helped me 'come to terms' with how i was feeling. You know when your DS cries and you go all hot and you feel sick, your heart races and you hear shushing in your ears? Well apparently that is a hormone reaction to your baby's cry to tell you that he/she needs something. Dates back to caveman/woman times when a lot of people would have been living together in one cave (I sound daft now don't i!), and it helped you identify if it was YOUR baby that needed attention.

Now I know this won't help you identify WHAT he wants but it will help you rationalise how you feel. I used to think a mantra to myself "totally normal, totally normal" and give it a minute or so before i saw to the twins, meaning I was calmer. Thats not to say that all I've said helped me 100% and i was a calmer happier mummy - I still had REALLY shitty days, sob myself silly, not venture out the house and fret like mad about what dh would think if i was still in my pyjamas and the washing up wasn't done when he got home.

Can I also say that you can leave him in his cot/moses basket if you just need time out, make sure he's safe and comfy and walk away for 5 mins, even if he is crying - he may even figure out for himself that he can self settle....but if he doesn't you've had 5 mins of not holding him. Build up a mental list to go through each time he cries - nappy, wind, milk, sleep. At the mo he is very angry about being in this big scarey world, he was very happy inside mummy thank you very much and really doesn't want to be here - just give him time and remember the ONLY thing that babies know how to do well to get attention is cry. So he might not be necessarily sad, hungry, unhappy he just wants you there and he can't say, oi mum get yourself over here, so he wails.

Well done for getting this far, and keep that chin up.

re CAT - if you click on the "contact a mumsnetter" link at the top of the page, it's explained - you do however have to pay a £5 annual subscription. Essentially enables you to email other mnetters without them having to disclose their email address.

I think you are assuming that I didn't read your replies properly. As I said ninedragons, providing 'support' to anyone with those types of terms is offensive and demeaning, it is irrelevant whether or not they post on MN. It demeans the value of the support available out there and discourages those who need it to look for it. It also fosters the prejudices and myths towards breastfeeding supporters in the general society as there are many parents will only lurk on these threads and take those impressions with them to their real lives.

If you do believe that MNers provide excellent support all round, it would have been a more positive thing to advise NL to post on the Breast and bottlefeeding boards.

as I said I don't want this topic to hijack NL's thread so if you would like to reply to me on this topic, maybe you can start a thread in Breast and Bottlefeeding and I will respond to you there?

Completely, completely normal. They don't come with an owner's manual. Just treat him like a strange unpredictable gadget that came with instructions all in Korean- you'll start spotting patterns and working out how the thing works by and by, but it takes time... You will adjust to the lack of sleep. He will start to become clearer.

You will NOT feel like this forever, I promise.

And I felt like screaming 'WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?'. To which my friends with babies said 'Urrr, we did. But you were too busy folding up your little piles of white babygrows and obssessing about which buggy to get to listen'

PMSL at this post - it really summed up how I felt the first few weeks!

I remember crying lots and watching all my neighbours tootling off to work for a "normal" day and wishing secretly i was them...

But it did get easier and better I promise...I think you have to keep repeating "it's just a phase" - Honest to God, I had those four words written on a post-it on the fridge!

We used to try and get out as much as possible - bundle the baby in the pram and they will hopefully sleep. You will feel much better for the fresh air. They will feel better for sleeping.

You will be able to talk as a couple, rather than battling to be heard over crying. People will say admiring things about your baby and you will feel a bit proud and think maybe its not so bad...

And I agree about the congratulations cards...I felt like a real fraud not being delighted at all these cards and especally all the little outfits and feeling too knackered to actually use them! But I got a great price on e-bay for them ;)

I couldn't agree with you more about not derailing NL's thread, but I don't have any inclination to get into a debate about it.

Back to cheering on the new mum. How are you doing tonight, NL? You are lucky to have a dog, as it does force you to get out of the house once or twice a day for walkies. We have just had nearly a fortnight of snow and I'm so pleased it stopped - cabin fever was definitely starting to set in.

I had a lightbulb moment about the sleeplessness. I realised oh, this is why I could stay up all weekend when I was 20 - biologically I was supposed to be having babies and it wasn't a gift from Mother Nature to let me go clubbing three nights on the trot.

I also worried a lot that I was developing PND..had a history of anxiety and panic attacks, had twins and was living in a new area - it's so hard when you're isolated like that..so my heart goes out to you..

I had a great great doctor who I had long chats with. He thought I was mildly depressed rather than having PND but it was good to feel that someone was keeping an eye on me...

I found walking loads and loads helped. Sometimes I couldnt' bear to get out of the house but I always always felt better and it would give me something to look forward to the next day, the chance of talking to another adult!!

sorry i'll go away and do some work in a minute I promise! I remember so well crying at the thought of the night shift...I used to be so relieved when our neighbour would leave early for work at 5.30 - Yes, someone else is up and alive!

The thing that helped me which may sound very un-pc was watching tv!

Dh brought a little tv up to our bedroom and I would keep the room dark and the sound very low, but just the flickering lights and listening to other people talking and being awake would help a little! I could still concentrate on feeding but didn;t feel so alone...

And I actually learnt some random Italian phrases from Open University programmes!