*deep breath* I regret having children.

[BadGround]

Ive namechanged clearly... even so, writing the title took me about 20 minutes... but it still doesn't sound wrong.

I regret having my ds. He is 15 months old now, and while I'd go to the ends of the Earth for him, there is not a day goes by that I don't kick myself.

It is not PND. I am not depressed or 'down'. No doubt someone will try to convince me it is, just like unhappy victorian ladies were labelled as mentally ill when they were desperately unhappy with the lives society gave them. I am perfectly happy with my life, or rather, I was. My son is perfectly lovely, and my dh is extremely helpfull. I adore them both. And no, I wasn't pressured into it, either. I was in love with the idea. I thought it was what I wanted. Society told me it was what I wanted ,right?

I would never give up my ds, and I look forward to giving him a loving environment to grow and learn... but if there was a way to reverse time, and politely, painlessly engineer him out of existence, I would. Honestly.

It never occurred to me that I had any choice otherwise. Nobody ever tells you that you have a choice. I miss my old life intensely, and the thought that I had every right and opportunity to keep it that way makes me sick. It's got to the point that these thoughts don't make me feel guilty anymore.

I miss my relationship with my partner. I miss what we did together. I miss being able to walk out the front door of my own bloody house without a second thought. I miss having the money to spend on the odd nice thing. I miss having a house full of our nice, beautiful, adult things. I miss being able to ponder freely over my career options.

Honestly, truthfully, does anyone feel the same? I don't mean those who are unfortunate enough to have depression... does anyone actually endure cold, hard regret? Even just sometimes?

I don't want help. I don't even know what I want. I don't think I could describe myself as feeling "desperate". I guess i just want to feel like I'm not a hideous monster all on my own.

I know I'll probably get a million identical replies of "It's sometimes hard... but I wouldn't change them for the world!!!". Although, yeah, I'm happy for you.

Please don't hate me, is what I'm really trying to say. I actually consider myself quite a loving person.

Don't really know how to end this. Over to you.

[1verytiredmummy]

Wow I can't believe I found this thread. I feel slightly better having read all the messages. I have a 6 month old and feel like my life has ended.I am having such a hard time coming to terms with it all.

[hmc]

I used to feel that way OP, when they were really small, now I don't! (they are 6 and 8). Ime it gets easier - whether it is because their needs and demands are not so encompassing as they get older, or whether it is because we have to undergo some painful transformation (and learn to compromise and not be so self serving and hedonistic) before we 'acclimatise' I don't know, think it is a combination of both

[bacon]

Wow, I cried and cried last weekend as I hated them. Lovely boys, perfect in every way but how exhausting and wild they are. Hubby works (self employed) many hours and I just get fed up with being stuck with 2 & 5 yr old as I struggle to think what to do when the baby runs in the opposite direction.

Constant early rises, long days - fighting, whinging, howling what is the joy? As a SAHM and helping hubby with business the constant lists, planning, organising and then at 3pm stopping to pick up DS1.

Friday's I have a long child free day but thursday night I stressing on how much I need to enjoy and get as much done as possible. My house is being ruined, the walls are dirty, floors scratched, bath scratched, mess and crumbs everywhere.

I agree so much, the day they were born I didnt have this overwhelming love like its told, took months to bond and have never turned down an overnight stay without them.

I had this lovely image of coffee meetings with friends, baking all day, feeling boundlessly happy, but its nothing like that, its all about being totally unselfish, giving up your life for their needs and yours no longer count.

I just worry that I'm giving up my life and they could turn around at 16 and turn into total idiots (like my hubby was!) and thats the last they see of them, god I hope not! ....

[bacon]

This minute I'm here all alone, all windows open, birds twetting, perfect...loving being all alone in MY world.....on edge now for the car door!!!

[ZeroMinusZero]

My dd is only three weeks but one thing that struck me is that I don't have that 'overwhelming joy' that they talk about. I'm not sad or especially regretful, but I certainly haven't really had that much happiness yet.

[Waytooslow]

Can I add myself to the pile please! The OP's feelings are exactly the same as mine - I also have a 15 month old son. I have been diagnosed with PND though. I was on anti depressants for severe anxiety and dread of being home alone with my son when he was smaller. Maternity leave for me was hell.

Once I went back to work in December, I felt better and eased myself off the Prozac (under Dr's advice). However more recently, and after a period of DS being ill, grizzly, grumpy and just a plain nightmare to deal with, I got all those old anxious feelings back, plus those feelings this thread has been talking about. I find being a mother just really difficult and I feel like I'm acting being a mother whilst hiding my true feelings. On the outside I would appear to be the perfect mother, doing all the right things for my DS, but inside I can't bear spending lengths of time doing mumsy stuff. DS goes to nursery full time and so I only see him for about an hour and a half each day and to me that is enough. At the weekend, I get really miserable and have to have loads of plans as I need to kill the time before my DS goes to bed. My husband is very understanding and does what he can to support me and give me time to myself and I also have very understanding friends and family, but I can't get away from the fact that I'm his mother and I've got myself in this mess that I can't get myself out of.

Like many of the other posters, I do love my DS but just feel overwhelmed with regret about my decision to have a baby.

A

PS - I went back on the Prozac today so I'm hoping that this will help my current state of mind........

[WMDinthekitchen]

Haven't read every single post but I am at the other end of the spectrum from most of you. My children are 24, 22 and 16 and I have not felt "right" since the first was born. Exhaustion, boredom, trying to do the best and always feeling I have failed. Reading to them, playing with them, school runs, after school clubs, standing on the touchline for sport at weekends, supporting them when they were unhappy. I tried so very hard. Didn't stop two of them turning their backs on me when their father and I divorced to go and live with him. The youngest has exams coming up but is not working for them, just spending every minute with infantile boyfriend. If she fails the exams, that will be my fault too no doubt. I feel as though I have been locked up for almost 25 years. My sensibilities are so blunted that I don't even dare look forward to when the youngest leaves home. Sorry folks, but that's how it was and is. Tried everything for all of us for it to feel better but to no avail. I do not have words to describe how much I regret having had children.

[AnnVeronica]

WMD I'm so sorry you feel that way

I don't have children. When I was a teenager and even up to my early twenties I couldn't have imagined not having babies. Now, the older I get, the stronger my conviction that I really don't want to be a mother. I'm 32.

I'm so grateful for the raw honesty on this thread. It's a subject I have no way of discussing in RL.

[BadGround]

WMD, I'm sorry things turned out like that for you. I'm so glad you feel like you can say it here. I don't judge you for what you've said, and nor should anyone else. People seem to be allowed to regret any other lifestyle choice they make, except this one, it seems. Hope things turn out ok. x

[ealey]

I want to thank a lot of the people who have posted on this thread. I have a 3 year old and a nearly one year old, and have been finding things very difficult recently. There have been a lot of bad days where I have found myself wishing that I hadn't had children. However some of the posts on here have made me feel a bit less guilty about this, and others have really helped me to begin to turn things around. I'm trying to embrace the idea of raising them as my friends rather than as a burden, and looking forward to a time when we can all enjoy doing things together. I think I find the hardest thing is the pressure I put on myself - I take it very hard when they eat poorly, sleep poorly, and when my eldest doesn't meet his developmental 'targets' (he won't draw or attempt anything creative or messy like most children will). I'm trying to take the pressure off a bit, and to believe that for the time being that it's enough to be with them and to love them. Yesterday was another bad day, but I think things are slowly getting better.

[Bensmum76]

Ealey, I think we mothers have a habit of wanting everything to be perfect, after all, we all want the best for our children! I'm trying to enjoy my baby, now six weeks old, and really do enjoy my 3.6 year old. I try not to pressure myself into doing too much with my older boy as sometimes its ok for him to just want to stay at home and chill.
Take it days it comes, I know I am! Things can only get better/easier and there will be good and bad days

[luckywinner]

Another one here adding to the pile. Mine are 5 and 4. I love them so so so so much, but I desperately miss my freedom, the times when I didn't have to think about what to cook, have they got their pe bag, saying the relentless have you brushed your teeth, please put on your shoes blah blah blah. Motherhood is a pile of shite. When my ds was born I remember thinking, no one ever ever told me it was going to be like this. I remember going to a good friend's wedding when he was 3 weeks old and thinking 'oh god, I'm so tired, I'll have an early night,' and then thinking 'no I won't because I have to get up and feed you at 10pm, and then 2pm...' It made me feel utterly panic stricken, like I was in some sort of jail.

No one ever told me labour would be so painful, no one ever told me that breastfeeding would be so hard, no one told me how hideous sleep deprivation is, that having a baby is lonely, and that you disappear, you are no longer you. That you have no idea where this baby ends and you begin. My children are 18 month apart. I have little recollection of those months when I had two, apart from this overriding feeling of stress. I love them to pieces, but I mourn those days when it was just me. A friend once said, I love my children when they are asleep and at school. Becoming a mother fucks with your identity. No one ever told me that either. It is one big conspiracy theory. I don't want to hear from those who have come on this thread to tell us to get over ourselves. I can't and I won't. I am not ashamed to admit this is how I feel. And to be honest, denying it for so long has landed me in a rather huge pile of depression that I am desperately trying to get out of.

[Bensmum76]

I don't think we should have to get over it either. We are only human and deserve to be our own people too not just mothers. No one tells the truth when it comes to just how hard it all is, I actually forgot before i had my second child and can't believe I'm back to the start again!
This morning the baby was in bed with me and I closed myeyes and wished he wasnt there! But then when I was feeding him at 3.30am I imagined him pulling himself up onto the sofa and felt really excited about the future!
Right at this moment I hate my life and the relentlessness of babyhood but have lots of hope for the future

[Oscalito]

"I miss my old life intensely." God, I can relate to that. The parallel universe that exists in your head where you wonder what you'd be doing if you hadn't had kids. I had an odd experience, in that when my baby was five weeks old I got very sick. I was in A&E and when the doctor said, I want to keep you in, I was so relieved. For ten nights it was as if I hadn't had a baby. I slept, food brought to me, I read novels, read the paper from cover to cover, slept, slept more.... it was utter bliss after the shock of becoming a parent. Having that time out made such a massive difference to my mental health. I don't know what would have happened otherwise... anyway in relation to this thread, what I learned from it is how important it is to get away from being a mother, even for an hour.

[notenoughsocks]

Thank you all for this thread.
Oscalito, I was interested to hear about your experience. I went six months from giving birth (rather draining in itself) before I got more than four hours sleep - I know that that is nothing compared to what some people experience. I have, like a lot of parents I suspect, to wake up naturally so I don't really know how much sleep I could use but I think I still could use a bit more than I am getting.
Anyhow, I often used to wonder that if, somehow, I had been given a few twelve hour sleeps here and there in those early days when I practically started hulicinating from lack of sleep, that I would have felt - and might now feel - better about it all.

[Oscalito]

Notenoughsocks glad you posted, thought I'd killed the thread! I am certain that lack of sleep is what grinds you down. I was a mess when I went into hospital (complications of swine flu) and came out feeling human again. My sleep was so messed up I made them give me a sleeping pill every night to guarantee a full 8 hours. Agghh baby awake. Hope you get some sleep soon.... I have a four month old and he's never slept more than 4 hours in a row either....not much fun really.

[Meglet]

I think it's the full on intensity of young children that nearly kills us. As another poster has already said, years ago the kids would be playing out from a young age, left to cry in the garden, weaned from a young age to help sleep and you could leave them outside a shop. We don't get any of that now.

I had a hysterectomy nearly 2 years ago and was not allowed to do anything with the kids for weeks, I was actually rather fond of them by the end of that as I'd had a break. Mine are 4.5 and 2.7 now and while most days are a killer I can see it getting easier little by little.

[Oscalito]

I also think we're booted out of hospital too quickly. Oh for the old days when you had the baby in a nursery so you could sleep at night and stayed in bed for a good five days. I know things have changed and there are reasons for that, but IMHO a bit more time right at the start, when your hormones are all over the place and you're exhausted from the birth, would make the launch into motherhood a bit less gruelling.

[auburnlizzy78]

Hear hear to that! I blame the shitty exhausting induced labour, birth and post natal hell where the baby never left my side despite the fact that I'd gone three days without sleep for how I feel about having my DS now. I didn't exactly start all happy and well rested and thinking clearly and I've never really had the chance to have a proper break and recover. This all gets twisted in my mind into "I regret EVER having started on this path" but I'm not convinced I mean it.

I am simply too shattered, not just tired and in need of a good night's sleep, but tired to my very bones, to think clearly and have any enthusiasm for anything, especially 24/7 parenting where I am never ever off duty and where each day is as dull as the one before and the four walls close in, and when the baby is screaming and I don't know why.

It has to get better.

[notenoughsocks]

auburnlizzy78, it will get better. Proably quite slowly, but things will get easier bit by bit. Perhaps speak to your HV. They have heard it all before, they are unshockable and can be quite helpful.

I don't know why we are left to go through this in this way, and why there is this big taboo about talking about it. It does my head in. I think you are right, it is too easy to get sucked down the 'I regret this path'.

One of my ealiest experinces with DS made me wonder about the emphais that is put on various aspects of motherhood today. I had to stay in hospital for two days after the birth for obs, even though the labour had been fine. It was made perfectly clear from the beginning that THE BABY SHOULD BE WITH ME, ATTACHED TO ME, AT ALL TIMES. I vaguley remember this bit in the night after my DP had gone home where DS was screaming and screaming and screaming despite my best efforts to feed him. At one point there were probably three or four midwives and nurses around my help 'helping him to latch on'. I was not a nervous breastfeeder, and was pretty sure that it was not simply a case of getting his latch right. He had been latched on, then had had enough and wanted, for reasons unknown to me, to cry. He was screaming, and my body was being pulled about (I am sure they were quite gentle and were genuinely trying to help, but that is what it felt like to me). Finally, I said that I couldn't take it any more. They took him off me and gave him 40ml of formula. He slept for seven hours and I got a few hours in. But I felt like a total failure.

PS - it didn't mess up my BFing. Aside from that 40ml, he was exclusively bf until five months. I am still giving DS the odd feed here and there over a year later.

[Philomeena]

Old thread but thank goodness for it and the honest support. I agree with the post and just hope I feel different when they are older and I am less exhausted.

[Athrawes]

Some above seem to have STILL missed the point. That we love pour children, would cross heaven and earth for them, nurture them and that they feel loved, but that we still miss our previous lives. Life before children was GOOD. I feel sorry for my husband because he was given the choice, me and a child or not me at all and he decided to keep me and have a child. He loves our son more than life itself but still, we were both driven by my pure insatiable biological desire. If I could have had the benefit of hindsight I would look at what we have now and say, actually, no thanks. That looks great, but this looks better. Previous generations would probably say the same. The women and men who by choice don't have children and don't regret it have been brave enough to say that they know themselves better than their biology does! I wouldn't give my boy away now because that would cause him irreparable harm. But if there was a way of turning back the clock, or making him not exist AND everyone else FORGET, I would.

[uka888]

I think it’s so important women can speak honestly about their feelings , both positive and negative, we should be able to be more realistic about parenting in 2020.

[Halli2020]

How very selfish. What about those who can't have children or have lost children. You should've thought this before you popped out a child. You're the reason kids end up hating their parents.