can't stand the babies father what if my baby looks like him ?

[lou222]

I'm getting worried that i won't like the baby as much as i should
as everytime i look at fathers face I want to punch him!!

you are angry because you are pregnant, you won't feel like this afterwards.

Oh Lou my ds looks like the spit of his father apart from his hair colour and he is so unexpected because he is so marvelous and unlike his dad in character. It is great like getting a spitting image the way you always wanted them to be.

It is more of a problem for my ds than me to be honest as he doesnt want to be anything like his dad! He hates that he looks like him.

Lou this is really tricky, I had the same issue a year ago. Turns out I could see my own features as a baby, when he was just born - which helped enormously - it was like looking at a photo of me when I was tiny!
I loved him for that and also becasue like Glitter says, he is such a joy and epitomises the nice side of his father, I mean I think his fair hair and expressions and so on are sweet, rather than annoying and hhorrible like his dad was! You'll see what we are on about once he is born - honest! People used to say to me, he'll be a separate person, he isn't his dad - and I couldnt't understand how that helped, but once he arrived I felt nothing but love. Trust me

(and I didn't bond AT all when I was preggers!)

My DD was the image of her Dad when she was born but it truly didn't stop me bonding with her. People always used to say she looked like him which was annoying, but as she's got older (now 3.3) she's changing and now looks just like me. TBH tho, if she still looked like him it really wouldn't bother me. After all, if I hadn't had sex with him that night I wouldn't have my lovely DD at all!! I can't regret having my DD with him as I feel like I hit the jackpot. He doesn't see her at all so IMO he's missed out big time and he's given me the greatest gift in the world.

Even if you don't bond straight away - don't panic - it's normal for it to take a while and doesn't mean you never will, or that it's because of your ex. Try to just enjoy that 1st cuddle and be proud for creating a little person. Good luck xx

DH (scientist) asserts that all babies genetically programmed to look like their fathers when born so the father won't leave because he knows it's his. Don't know how true this is but DH says it the kind of authoritative way that makes you think he knows what he talking about

This was true of both mine when born, ds still looks like dh but dd, nothing like now. But my eldest niece only if you squinted in bad light, round a corner resembled my brother ; she is the spitting image of my SIL.

The point is that YOU are going to be the most influential adult in dc's life, whatever they look like.

no i really really don't like anything about the father, his looks, personality, anything!! ( i obviously did like him to begin with but def was never in love with him)

i had already gone off him before i found out i was pregnant and i feel nothing for him
i keep wishing this had happened with any of my other boyfriends apart from him

i am excited to be pregnant but worried about how the baby will look and if i'll bond

• i'm sure i will but i know a friend who had a girl who grew up with the same mannerisms as father and a bit sulky like him and it got on her nerves!! thanks for your replies flight did you have the same concerns before your baby was born?

Perhaps you should have thought of this before you did the deed[tongue in cheek emotion]

give it time you will forget what he looks like and it wont matter

honestly,though,i think heated's dh knows what hes talking about,IME anyway(i have 5 children).

ha ha yeah soapbox believe me it was an accident!!
i've just screamed at him that there is no way i would have planned to have his baby
(he's accusing me of deliberately trapping him!! )

but like i say i am happy now about the pregnancy
i don't him much but when i do i just keep looking at his face thinking - oh no what if my baby looks like him
but like you say i will be the main influence so hopefully won't have too many of his character traits!
why didnt i have sex with george clooney instead?

Well you still could

Heated, its the MILs that are supposed to fall for the baby looking like the father. Back in the cave man days the father wouldn't actually have been looking in the mirror much would he?

ds was spitting image of his dad when he was born couldn't see me in him at all (apart from really dark hair}, he was like this for the first few months. Hes no 16 months and is like a mini me and my side of family (thank god, hoping he takes after my db's and is tall unlike his dad) hehe

Choccy, it maybe doesn't apply anyway in your caveman scenario because it has been strongly suggested that theirs was not a monogamous society; only the strongest males in the tribe got to impregnate the females.
But it might well apply to ancient civilisations? Who knows?

Like I said, I'm not totally convinced by dh, but certainly it was in the mother's interests to promote the link between father and child. A mother invariably knows when a child is hers. She gestated the child, she delivered it, so her maternity is pretty much unassailable. But a father cannot be sure. Therefore evolution favors the development of strategies to detect paternity in offspring and fidelity in the mother.

However, males also use the physical appearance of offspring to attempt to determine paternity. A recent fMRI study showed that males demonstrate a different pattern of brain activity when viewing photographs of children than females do, with activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus.1 This area of the brain has been implicated in response inhibition and decision-making under uncertainty. The authors of this study think that the male brain checks images of children?s faces for self-resemblance, and when this is found inhibits suspicion of that child, possibly enabling enhanced paternal behaviour.

Still to be answered is the question why all babies look like Winston Churchill.

Hi Lou

Yes, yes, utterly terrified. I was happy about the pregnancy at first too - felt like I loved the tiny thing inside me, (a contrast to the way I felt during the act, heehee)
ahem. But I suppose I was still hopeful about the father at that point. It was when I was about 3 months that I finally realised I had 'permission' to leave the arsehole, because I broke down in front of my mother, and she begged me to leave him - well he'd kind of left already, really - and it was at that point that I came to my senses and realised I'd totally lost all respect and any feelings for him I'd ever had. (we' only been dating about 8 months by then) and that was when I stopped loving the baby. Because it was his, and I hated him as much as you can hate a person.
I went for my scan, and took home photos I couldn't bring myself to look at. I felt it move at 12 weeks and resented it - didn't want to think about it, see the bump, feel the kicks. I hated that poor little thing.
I wished to God that I had taken my chance and had an abortion - not because I ever agreed with abortion,(everyone told me to have one and I'd decided I couldn't - cancelled four appointments) but because I felt nothing for the baby and didn't want it to be born unloved. Plus I had awful morning sickness which made it rough for me and my ds...my mum was furious at having to help out so much.
Anyway this went on - search under flightattendant last spring, there are various threads about it - also sirius5, in the adoptions board, as I asked there about having him adopted.
It got to about 5 weeks before the birth and I still couldn't enjoy a moment of it - couldn't want the baby - but I'd had time to calm down. Also the blok had stopped pestering us so much, and I felt a bit safer (thought I'd be trapped, which was a big part of it). it did feel hideous having what I considered a 'part of him' in my body.
But at that point, things altered a little. I began to feel rather sorry for the baby. I had dreams where I would be screaming and saying 'take it away from me' and actually thought I would feel that way when it was born.
Writing it down and talking a bit about it helped get that guilt out, at least. I allowed myself to feel the hatred and fantasise about giving up the baby. That was really useful as it made me cry a lot, and after that I knew I loved it - well I knew I had the potential to. Not just feel sorry for it like an abandoned puppy I'd found in the street, which was what I didn't want to feel.
Anyway, I kind of realised nobody else was going to love it, and I was the only one who could help it - and when he was born, I felt nothing at first - just anger and pain and shock (very quick birth) and cross with the fact I wasn' being helped or supported by his father, (though glad he wasn't there!!) but then after I stopped shaking and was stitched and everything, I looked down at this little soft lamb and well, he was just a baby - he was beautiful, he wasn't his dad, he was a mixture of features but it didn't matter much if he had a slight look of his dad.
I didn't care because he needed me and was small and vulnerable and loved me, I was all he had, and then I got overwhelmed by love for him like I never even felt with my first - whose dad I adored - perhaps my mind's way of over compensating. Like I said, I had a long time to prepare, and I think you do, whether you're aware of it or not.
I even posted once asking for reassurance because I felt I loved him TOO much. it was odd!
I think you'll be Ok Lou. Sorry for the long essay. I hope it helps a wee bit - you've a way to go yet, give your subconscious a chance to step in, it will look after you xx

They all have things that annoy you - most definitely - I get that with both of them 'you're just like your father!' But they can't help it

I think people see what they want to see when they look at a baby. My health visitor would go on about how my son looked just like his grandpa with his, blue eyes, blonde hair... She didn't know i was adopted and so my son had no genetical link to his grandpa (my dad).

I see a lot of my son's father in him and it wasn't just appearance. Heck he even smelt like him (nice smell not nasty stink!) and he sleeps with his feet sticking out of the duvet just like him... So many little traits. But then my mum tells me my son looks a lot like i did as a child, and he can be stuborn like me, and his brain is wired for numbers like mine is... Plus a lot of people not in the know think he looks just like his cousin. Again no genetic link there at all, but on some level there is similarities there, both have blonde curly hair and have slim athletic frames!

So I think there are genetic traits that come through, and mannerisms too, but you will see what you want to see.

One look at your child and how you feel about his father will be irrelevant. And he can't be that bad looking really, i mean you liked him enough to sleep with him, so he can't be that dreadful, it's just your feelings about him now are colouring your opinion most likely...

Try not to worry.
Gilly

I dont know Gilly there are men you need several bottles of wine to sleep with and others you dont!

Honestly Lou my X repulses me now but my ds is beautiful and good looking as well. It is the little differences and the lack of meanness and the character that make all the difference.

If I'm being logical and analytical I know that my daughter is a female version of her Dad, but at the same time, she is only herself. I never look at her and see him behind her eyes.... if that makes sense..

wow flight you poor thing going through all that
I'm lucky then that i don't feel that towards my baby at the moment - like i said just worried when he/she is born

the difficult thing is the more i get to know about the father the less and less respect i have for him - the lazy, arrogant, self centred sloth that he is!
we had only been going out a few months but the honeymoon period had long gone and our relationship was on it's last legs really!

your right gilly bean i did like him enough to sleep with him sober as well as not!
and looking at pictures of him when he was younger he was quite cute so i'm sure i'll be ok
glad i'm not the only one to have these thoughts and feelings though! and thanks for all your words of support you have put my mind at ease!

My ds was an accident and is the image of his father, whom I heartily loathe (it turns out his wife understood him perfectly). Fortunately ds is his own personality and, two years in, it has stopped bothering me.

However, his Nanny on the father's side is obsessed by ds and I'm sure it's the resemblance to her son. She sits in my kitchen glowering at the "hoor of Babylon" (she has a strong Irish accent) who tempted her son from his marriage while feeding DS chocolate biscuits and cooing.

All very odd. Frankly, I wish she'd bog off but I really can't be bothered to have cross words with a seventy plus woman so I just keep passing the biscuits and being painfully pleasant.

Smidgery I like your attitude

Do you still have to see the father or just his mum?

Lou - does bloke have any other children? I was reassured by the fact ex had two older ones, who were both very sweet - the boy looks nothing like him which is very good.

ha smidgery you have more patience than me !

flight..
no he has no other children
to begin with he wanted no involvment which i was happy about
but now he's wanting to be quite involved - i don't mind that - except he thinks he can stay here weekends etc and he bugs me just by walking in the door!

I had to laugh when I read the title of this thread (please don't be offended). All of xh's kids are the spit of him, and I hate his guts. But I don't see him when I look at them; I see them. You will just love the little bundle, wait and see.

Apparently, all babies look like their dad's at birth, so that the dads 'believe' that the baby is theirs. How true that statement is .. I don't know.

I know I'm really old and boring - but why sleep with someone you want to punch?

All babies look like their dad's at birth? The placenta quite often looked like him though.