Taboo subject

[roseability]

A bit of a taboo subject but something I feel I need to get off my chest. I suffered from PND when DS was born but due to denial it wasn't officially diagnosed until he was about 13 months old. I started ADs and feel like a different person. I have a great relationship with my son and enjoy motherhood. Here comes the but...I still feel incredibly guilty about the early months when some days I was so low and desperate I would lash out at my son physically. I never harmed him properly, or left marks or bruises etc but a handful of times I smacked him, pulled his hair and even nearly shook him. One terrible, terrible day I put my hands around his neck and although I would never have seriously harmed him it was an absolute low point for us both. He cried a lot and breastfed constantly and I was left on my own for long hours with him. I had a forceps delivery and mastitis. I know this isn't an excuse, I know I was wrong. I am receiving counselling for family issues and know I need to forgive myself. I sound like a horrible mum but I love him dearly and haven't done this sort of thing since he was 6 monthsish (he is 19 months now). Looking back I was obviously depressed and suffered from anxiety but put a brave face on. I have a supportive, loving husband and wonderful PIL. He was a planned and wanted baby but I do have a dysfunctional family and they weren't very supportive when DS was born. I can't believe I would do such things. Has anyone else experienced simliar feelings? Not everyone is brave enough to admit they felt like this. I was so worried he would be taken away from me yet now he is a bright and happy little boy and i have even just reduced my working hours to be with him more. Phew feels good to get that off my chest

You are really brave to have the guts to admit to this and I am glad that things have improved for you now. I found myself at the point of shaking dd when she was just 2-3 weeks old and realised then that i am not the most patient person and needed to walk away when things got on top of me. Fortunately that day shocked me so much that I got myself help and found that I also suffered from PND.

My sister's first ds was born with severe poblems...took them 4 years to diagnose..her pil's blamed her for it...I remember her being exhausted. He cried non stop. She did not even have PMD. She did have a rough birth and her DH was still a bit of a mummy's boy at the time.... and she confessed to me that she sometimes felt like throwing him agains the wall. She did once or twice drop him on her bed and walked out before she could do more harm. She also is racked with guilt over that time..... but you KNOW it wasn't you doing and wanting to do those things. It has been proved that sleep deprivation can cause psychotic behaviour. You seem to have so much of your own hurt and unhappiness to cope with and NOW you seem to be the wonderful mother that was just hidden and overwhelmed by all this stress. You are not judged!! Do not judge yourself. Your DS won't remember any of it any way....not if you carry on being a loving mum.

Thank you for your lovely messages. I just wish women could be more open about feeling like this. I do believe there is something in most of us, that would stop us seriously harming our babies/children but sometimes the sleep deprivation/constant demands etc are too much. We are on our own a lot with babies as well. You don't know what it means to be able to say these things without being labelled a monster/bad mum. I'm certainly not a perfect Mum but i do believe i have come through the worst bit.

Poor you Rose.
You sound like a lovely mother.
I honestly don't believe that there is one mother in the world who hasn't snapped and done or said a horrid thing at some time.

I freely admit to throwing my screaming colicky 4 week old baby onto my bed and screaming 'Just fucking shut up for fucks sake.'

I'm not proud of it but looking back I was a woman on the edge for a lot of reasons.

Forgive yourself and move on my love.

XXX

I've done too many awful things to my Dc to recount, also feel too awful to recount some of the worst, but i agree with moondog, find me a mother who hasn't......sure you can't, we've all done it, it makes you human, not a bad mother.

i used to have thoughts about hurting him but never actually did it. so for instance i would be walking along the landing upstairs and think it would be so easy to drop him over the edge now. or i'd think about pinching him so i'd get his skin between my fingers but wouldn't actually pinch him. god that sounds so horrible

i;ve done the throwing on the bed thing cos i knew it wouldn't hurt him. if you really wanted to hurt your baby you would throw them on the floor.

I read something once that put forward the theory that a new mother will run through all sorts of hideous scenarios in her head re harming her baby because it acts as a way of ensuring that they ONLY stay in the realms of the imagination and never come to fruition.

Found it enormously helpful in those first hormonally crazed weeks full of thoughts about shelves of heavy books collapsing on her and knives jumping out of drawers to slice into her.

Moondog - I often randomly thought about the shelf of books thing too. I'm really not sure where the thought came from, but I was severely sleep deprived for weeks.

Yes,lack of sleep a common form of torture.

that makes sense moondog. I will no longer feel bad about thinking about harming him when I never actually did.

I had PND too though it took some time to realise/admit it, DS was over a year at the time.

We had a rough start from labour to leaving hospital (no excuse I know) much as I loved him, there were times when I felt very resentful, (sounds awful) mainly when it came to feeding him and the times when I was feeling crap I tried to do my best before leaving him in the cot and I'd hibernate in the study and surf the Net for God knows how long .

I remember once in his pushchair, when he was over a year, shaking the chair with him in it, I then caught myself and my feelings and walked away.. I felt the worst mummy ever and it makes me cry to think of it now.

I would tell DH that I was awful and what made it worse was that I used to work with children and NEVER treated them like I had my OWN child I convinced myself he would be an insecure child etc and felt incredibly guilty... then I started to listen to DH and other people, even strangers and noticed they were complimenting ME on what a happy little well adjusted boy I had .

I then in time became more kinder to myself with my thoughts about myself, and now DS has started school and is VERY happy, social, kind little lad.. am pregnant with number2 and am praying this time around I wont have any repeats.. hopefully things will be better regarding circumstances, e.g a better start to the arrival, and will have DH around, as last time he was having to go away a lot.. it made me really respect my own mum and lone parents who did the upbringing of children all by themselves, because I felt so pathetic.

You sound a great Mum, and you are definitely not alone!

You don't know how much these messages have meant to me, to know i'm not the only one who has felt like this. I do think it is only human to feel like that sometimes and I like to think it is part of building a relationship with your DC . After all you wouldn't go through a marriage or any other close relationship for that matter without ever getting cross with the other person or going through bad patches, even lashing out.

Quite Rose.
So quit worrying now.

I had similar feelings for a long time with my daughter, not so much when she was a baby but from when she was about 12 months to when she was about three. When she was a baby I had fairly endless patience but as she got older I really began to struggle. I have a very good friend who had a child at 17 who I recently 'admitted' this to, and she told me that it had been the same for her too. The relief was incredible to be able to talk to someone about it.

I remember locking myself in the bathroom once because I had slapped my screaming toddler and was scared that I would do worse. At the time I lived in a rural area, with no family support and an appalling relationship with her father, not that its any excuse. I suspect I was suffering from late-onset PND, but at the time (and still a bit) I believed that it was because I was a Bad Person and a Bad Mother who didn't deserve her child. My xp was no help at all, he once caught me shouting at her when he came in from work (she had been screaming all day) and told me that if I couldn't cope I should have had an abortion when he told me to . His response was basically one of 'You wanted her, you deal with it'.

I think my feelings about the pregnancy and the fact that xp was so against it to begin with had a lot to do with the situation. I never felt as though I was allowed to be happy or excited about it, and once she was born I never felt able to admit to finding it difficult.

I'm still far shoutier and stressed out than I'd like to be but things are a lot better and me and dd have a good relationship now. I moved to live near my family whem I split up with xp and that helped a lot.

you poor thing stripeymama. you are NOT a bad mother. Although things are much better now, I do still occasionally lose it a bit. I recently had a bad patch because we all had a cold and DS was on antibiotics. He was very grumpy and hitting out at me (see they do it as well!!!!) and we were cooped up in the house more than usual. My usual support from my MIL wasn't there (she is in London helping SIL with her second baby!) and it was tough. One night, after his bath and a very long day I smacked him after he hit me . Not really good parenting, to smack him because he hit me! I told my MIL and she said we all do it. She has 4 children, all of whom have grown up well and have a close and loving relationship with her, and she did it. So it is nothing like in the early days, I wouldn't say i am depressed now BUT I still have bad days. We all do. Some of us are coping with a lot. Stripeymama although I have a good husband and I can't imagine how awful that must have been for you, I do have a difficult family. Oh well, I'm off to tescos, DS is about to demolish my radio. Hopefully chat later. Hope you all have a good day

stripeymama - if you ever need a chat or some adult company to keep you sane you know where I am. I think I've given you my email address but incase you've lost it, it is tobys_mummy at btinternet dot com

Thanks.

I have realised now that you need to admit to and face these feelings and that there is (or shouldn't be) any shame in that. Motherhood is quite 'idealised' I think - feelings like this are not really acceptable, even though I suspect lots of mothers experience them.

I adore my daughter but I do have to say that I feel some, not 'sympathy' exactly, but understanding of, women who snap and seriously injure their child.

A close friend of mine suffered from post-natal psychosis and did really hurt her son, and ended up in prison for it, and then on probation for two years. She lost custody and it took a long time for her to be allowed unsupervised access. She now has two more children and has not had PNP with either, and has custody of her son again. But she is one of the calmest, gentlest women I know, who has seemingly endless patience with her kids.

Society needs to offer mothers better support, rather than demonising those who do not live up to the 'ideal' of motherhood.

dont feel bad having a very young baby stresses everyone out and i cant imagine how hard it would be to have pnd on top of that.i never had it but there were many times i had to walk away because the sleep deprivation,frustration and stress was all too much and was at snapping point to say the least

Hi again

Interestingly if you look at tribal or traditional cultures where the whole community supports and respects the mother in her role, the babies don't cry as much and the mothers have less PND. I really do think we are expected to cope for long hours on our own with a new baby and the housework, cooking, jobs etc. In India the new Mum stays in bed for 6 weeks, is massaged evry day by a midwife (as well as baby) and family/community do all the cooking/chores! I'm sure there are down sides to these cultures as well but they maybe have less of these feelings. What do you think?

Absolutely!

I think mothers are expected to do more emotionally than they used to be - ok, we now have running water, disposable nappies etc, but we are told constantly that we need to interact with and stimulate our babies. Guilt is constant IMO, every choice we make seems to have some guilt attatched to it! We spend a lot more time 'alone' with a baby, with less family or other network for support, and my god it gets intense!

I think if I could have told my HV/GP truthfully about these feelings, I would have been diagnosed sooner, but I was so worried I would get labelled a child beater and he would be taken away. I did go to my GP once and told him I was worried I might hurt my DS, that I was at the end of my tether. He told me to get more support and a break from my DS. The problem was I didn't have much support from my family and couldn't easily get a break! As I said, I never seriously hurt my DS but i admit my behaviour wasn't strictly normal (whatever that is. I do want another baby and hope if that happened again I would know and seek help earlier

I had the Indian (Ayurvedic) massage thing for me and my dd1 for a week and lots of support in my community. I cannot describe all the benefits i felt in a small space here. We have this thing we do in our community for the first 6 weeks after birth..A friend of the new mum arranges for other people (not even always mums ) to cook lunch for the family of new mum... Dad usually collects the meal, but if he is at work we deliver. I had this done for me with dd2 and it is something I think everyone should have in this non tribal time we live in.

Bloody hell.... you have been through the wars and I have to say, well done for being so honest. It is hard becoming a mum because all we have to go on is our up bringing of how to be or not be a parent. We know what we didn't like our parents doing, however the behavours we did not like crop up and this means we judge ourselves harder than other mums as we are harder on ourselves because we should know better. There is no manual, but if you have an unpleasent upbringing you do judge your self harder because you want better for your own child. Well done, you have acknowledged you have not handled things well and have been a parent, who really wants a great life for you and your child. If you have learn't one thing from your parents, this is that how they were with you was wrong.....and you have. Love your kid as you have done, and well done for acknowledging you were doing wrong. Welcome to parent hood. Plus ads work for people who need them.

I never told anyone at the time for lots of reasons.

Fear that she would be taken away.

Not wanting to be seen to be 'not coping' or abusive or whatever.

Belief that I had no 'right' to these feelings when I had a perfect child and should be all rosy and grateful.

Also I think part of PND is that you don't really notice at the time - I certainly didn't, its only when I look back that I wonder how the fuck I kept it together (and why the fuck xp didn't notice or care)