Did you feel that you lost your sense of self after second/third babies as much as your first?

[morningpaper]

Did you feel that you lost your sense of self after second/third babies as much as your first?

I remember a few weeks after having DD I was shocked at how I felt that I'd literally been 'emptied out' and there was nothing left of me - it was all give give give until I had no real sense of identity left.

I now know that this is fairly common. However, I was wondering whether people felt this sense of losing your identity after subsequent babies - i.e. whether it is a part of having a newborn - or whether the feeling was not there so much - i.e. whether by that stage you feel that actually you had integrated your mother-self with your-self, and didn't feel the loss so painfully.

(Am I making sense?!)

You are making sense

I think I felt it with all of mine but more so each time I had a baby and mor so when I had the twins. Funnily enough I feel it now and the youngest is 2 but its not as bad as with twins. Maybe I just feel better only having one this time

I am going to do an Open University course and hope that will get a bit of 'me' back!!

No, nothing was as cataclysmic as the first baby.

Yes, I had that "loss of identity" after my second, too. My first was 3 when my 2nd was born, and my identity had just started to creep back. . .but it was back to square one when dd entered the scene. . .(Hope that wasn't what you DIDN'T want to hear!)

Now dd is just about 3, and I'm working pretty intensively, and I feel like I have an identity again.