Having a 'feel like a crap mother' moment, please be nice!

[louloutheshamed]

Have just spent a weekend with my pils and bil and sil and their lovely 5 week old baby. Mil making comments all the time about how sil has taken to 'naturally' to motherhood. And the thing is, she's right. Sil was chilled and happy, whereas I'm sure that when my ds (now 23 mo) was 5 weeks I was a weeping, incoherent mess.

At one point the baby was crying and being jiggled by bil, and sil was holding a conversation with me...I was so jittery and on edge when ds was that age that I jut couldn't concentrate on anything ds was upset, and I just needed to have him straight away whereas sil seems so relaxed about others holding her ds.

And if course mil thinks sil is wonderful for bf whereas web I did it she was all 'is he hungry AGAIN??' 'is he STILL feeding?' tut etc

Although i am delighted for bil and sil, The whole experience reminded me of how anxious I was I those First few weeks and how
It didn't come 'naturally' to me at all. Has anyone else felt like this?

I was like your sil when mine were that age then inexplicably at 4 months I fell to pieces and it took a good year to get back on track. Different people find different stages easy/hard, it's no reflection on you.

Yes yes yes my 3 DC are 5, 9 and 11 and i still have moments seeing new mothers and wonder why they had it so easy I was a wreck with all 3 of mine and some seem to be so chilled - I'm still not completely chilled now TBH but my 3DC are all lovely children and with the usual amount of arguments and raging against the rules are generally well behaved and pleasant around others if not always with me at home - so don't worry we're all different and remember you may just have caught her on a good day -we never know exactly what goes on behind cloded doors and often the ones who appear to be so perfect are only putting on a front. We all do it differently and I'm sure your DS is lovely and you're a great mum. xx

I would say it isn't natural to be chilled out when somebody else is holding your crying newborn!

I was very chilled out with my babies but when your baby is crying your hormones naturally make you anxious.

I would't be able to carry out a conversation if my 5 week old was crying.

And I'm an ace earth mother.

I was like you OP don't worry.

I think your MIL says your SIL is brilliant because MIL gets more of a "chance" to take care of the little one i.e. no mum immediately on top of DC, non mum attaching child every time to the breast etc.

btw, I was and will be again the same mother as you were/are. Think that is much more natural than what your SIL is doing.

Yeah I have a mil who constantly raves about my sil and what an amazing mum she is because she breast feeds, does baby led weaning and takes her baby swimming each week whereas I do none of that and I just get the "why don't you do what sil does?" and "why don't you have lots of mummy friends like sil does?". It's hard and it undermines my confidence but I try and tell myself that it says more about my relationship with mil than my abilities as a mum. I'm just different to sil - she goes away for weekends with her friends leaving baby with hubby or her parents (if hubby is working) and that's something I could never do. We all have different parenting styles and we all have different struggles with parenting - there's no right or wrong way to be. Lots of mums prefer to be the one to comfort their baby and that's a natural mothering instinct there's nothing wrong in that at all and I promise you that all new mums feel overwhelmed and helpless at some point however perfect they seem on the outside - you really can't judge by appearances. I was told how relaxed I look yesterday after I'd had a night where I broke down sobbing in exhaustion when dd refused to settle until the wee hours of the morning! I couldn't believe anyone could think that when I felt like crap! So don't delude yourself into thinking they are perfect and you're not - you're just as good as she is and you need to hold your head up high and let mil's comments roll off you - if we all listened to our mil we would never get up in the morning!

Loulou, they may end up with a difficult teenager, you know

Seriously, parenting is about the personality fit between parent and child. Your SIL is lucky because the fit is good. Next time it might not be. In your case you had a different dynamic. That is normal too, as each child is unique. I am sure you did just fine.