I keep thinking about killing my baby

[MargaretHale]

I'm not going to- I really love him. I just keep having these thoughts.
I don't want to talk about it because it's so awful but I don't know how to make it stop.
I'm looking after both my kids atm so might not reply very quickly to any response to this- please don't draw any terrible conclusions from this! I am a normal person, I have a lovely life, I promise I won't hurt them.
Any advice?

I spoke to a health visitor and I'm seeing my gp next week. Thank you for all your responses.

You sound like a lovely mum.
Just because you think something, doesn't mean it is true. The surprising fact is that your mind quite possibly is generating these thoughts actually because you love your children so much and want to protect them. Your mind looks around for any sort of source of harm and unfortunately it picked you yourself! Someone else's brain may have picked 'germs' or 'will get a disease' or 'will choke on a toy'. You got a particularly distressing flavour of thought. Your brain kind of said, oh wait hang on what if I kill my child myself, that'd be pretty bad, right?? How can I protect my child from that? Then that's even more distressing.
Was your baby birth's quite scary or traumatic, or was there a period where you were very very worried about him or he was very sick? Is anyone else close to you sick recently? Something like that might explain why you are getting these 'thought attacks'. Or as someone said it could be a bout of PND.
It can be a form of thoughts OCD where the obsessive worry behaviour is just in the thoughts. When people with a behaviour based OCD get stressed or protective they do some behaviours to make themselves safe. Your mind is kind of doing the same thing. So the content of the thought may not be that important, it is the fact that you are having the thoughts, when you get them, how often, etc and how anxious or stressed you are in general. A bit like having nightmares - it is not the content of the nightmare that is of significance, it is the pattern of them - how often they occur, how distressed is the person, how it affects the person overall, does it point to stress in their lives, etc.
Even if we don't think we are 'very worried', our brain can still be very worried behind the scenes and trying to find sources of danger to protect us from.
People can get intrusive thoughts about anything or anyone, it doesn't mean they would or will actually ever do anything. Have you ever had any form of OCD or 'rules-governed' behaviour?
The important thing is, are you feeling like yourself or not? You said 'I don't feel normal' so that points to some kind of issue going on. So the sooner the better you get help with that the better. When you are so busy with two smallies we can often lose touch with how we are really doing and suddenly we find we have stretched our personal resources very thin.
When explaining it to people at first you can say you are having very distressing thoughts that are scaring you, like some harm might come to your baby. Your GP will help, they are used to dealing with this.

I think you're right- I'm so careful with them, I'm always checking he's still breathing. It was a traumatic birth.
The health visitor is coming round next week.

I have to give my older boy a bit of attention now but thank you everyone for replying to me.

If you had a traumatic birth and are feeling this way then its very possible that you could be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Well done for seeking help this afternoon. You're a great mum

Hi MargaretHale,

We're so sorry that you're struggling with these thoughts.

We're glad that you're getting lots of good advice here, and that you're going to be seeing your health visitor next week.

In the meantime, there are lots of organisations which may be able to give you some support right now. Please do take a look at our mental health webguide. There are links to The Birth Trauma Association and the Association for Post Natal Illness, amongst others. There's also an organisation called PANDAS (Pre And Post Natal Depression Advice and Support) which we know has helped a lot of people who are feeling as you do. Their helpline number is 0843 2898401.

We really hope you're okay.

Well done for posting and making the appointments with your HV and GP. I had similar thoughts in the first few months after the birth of my DS (also a traumatic birth). Do post about what happened during the birth if you feel it would help.

I was very very anxious about getting postnatal psychosis though like you I was actually entirely lucid and very sure I loved my DS and would never hurt him in practice. Life is still much more fun if you're not suffering with these intrusive thoughts though and I don't think the HV telling you this is normal was helpful - maybe she meant this is common and in most cases not as serious as it sounds, but you can still get help and will feel so much better when you do! I had postnatal anxiety which also manifested as insomnia and I started taking ADs for that (I never told anyone about my intrusive thoughts). But perhaps because of the medication they did go away by the time DS was 6 months old or so.

A few months later I read a newspaper article that this is a common way for OCD to present in new mothers and I was hugely relieved to see in retrospect that this was a common and usually relative mild form of post natal mental illness. I'd assumed I didn't have PND because I knew I loved my baby and had bonded with him - no-one tells you about the other ways that postnatal mental ill health can present.

As other posters have said, occasionally these sort of thoughts are signs of much more severe PND/psychosis and need urgent attention to safeguard you and your children, but I wanted to reassure you as someone else who had been there and this is as bad as it got, and you can get better really quite quickly with the right help.

How you doing today Margaret?

I'm feeling better today- spoke to dh about it last night and he was really lovely, so that alone has massively helped. I couldn't have done it without the encouragement I got on here.

Hi MargaretHale,

We're so glad to hear that you're feeling a bit better today.

for you, and for all the lovely MNers who offered support.

Please keep talking - to your husband, to your health visitor, and on here.

Best wishes from all at MNHQ.

I had this too. I love him so much but had these awful thoughts. I knew they were awful and that I would never ever act on them but it's still pretty terrifying that they even occur.
For me they did go away after a while. However I have had massive anxiety issues since he was born and eventually I saw my GP who referred me for CBT and put me on sertraline. Not everyone needs this I know but it helped me a lot. I think the thoughts went away as the anxiety got better
I'm not medically qualified though so you might need different help to me. Good luck with it and well done for admitting it too

intrusive thoughts can just be so debilitating. I think people dont realise how common they actually are, because of course certain images and thoughts coming into your head when you dont want them to, are not always things you want to admit to thinking, but its a first step to realise what they are - its a form of OCD - google "pure O ocd"

Youre not going mad xx

Do the thoughts distress you, do you find them repugnant? If so it is very likely to be ocd.