Feel like I've not bonded with DS2. I NEED TO FIX THIS. HELP PLEASE.

[SecretCodesAndShame]

Long story short. Ds1 is 5 and I bonded with him right away despite the fact that he was a difficult cry-y baby, I felt strongly connected to him, carried him in a sling, basicially I was in love with him and still feel like he is my best buddy. I cuddle him and he just melts into me. I feel like I'd die without him.

DS2 is 14 months and also whiney and clingy but I just don't feel like I want to be attached to him. I do it because I have to. When he cries, I comfort him more to shut him up than because I feel love for him. That's bad isn't it? I know it's not right. I often think 'what if we'd never had him' how much easier things would be. I need to stop this now. I am so worried I will do him psychological damage in the long run if I don't get to the bottom if it.

I am having counselling but struggle to really do anything other than cry on the poor lady. I feel full of sadness and regret at how difficult things are. DS2 is beautiful, healthy, I should be so in love with him but it all feels fake. When he whines and cries I am screaming inside. I resent him for making DS1's life less than perfect which is pathetic I know.

I want him to be happy. I want to love him. I cuddle him. I kiss him and hold him a lot but the times when he's off entertaining himself I just want to run away and be in a different room from him. I can not do this to him any more. I grew up in a very unstable home. I wasn't hurt or abused as such but I always felt dispensible, never felt valued or safe. I can not do this to him. I don't want him to end up like me. He's just so beautiful but I keep thinking of all the poor people who can't have children and I feel so guilty and have fleeting thoughts of putting him up for adoption. We'd never do this by the way, even if sometimes it might be better for him :( DH is very attached to DS2, DS2 seems to pick up on this and is very possessive of DH and cries whenever he leaves his side to go to work which makes me think he's picking up on my feelings. Please help me love my son the way he deserves.

Aw, secret :( :( You are a good person and a good mother. You wouldn't give a shit about how you felt if you were not!

After 7 months of seeking treatment, things seem no better - it's not rocket science to say 'you need different help'.

It is important for both you and DS that you get help and you recognise this.

The counselling may not be cutting it. The anti-ds ditto.

Speak to your doctor or your HV and be honest about how much you long for the right support and a resolution. Some CAMHS have infant mental health services who work with mothers and babies together - generally for mothers and babies up to 3. They are highly effective.

I do have a sling which we use on days out with them because DS2 gets bored in the pushchair quite easily. The problem is around the house he mainly just wants to crawl about and play but wants to be crawling all over us! I will try the sling later actually as DS1 wants to do some baking when he comes home from school so might be quite interesting for DS2 to watch and poke about with the food.

Thank you Aitch, I just don't feel perfectly nice! I feel like if people knew how I felt then social services would take him away. He deserves so much more. The really sad thing is that if someone did take him away I think I'd feel relief. Sadness for DS1 and DH who adore him but for me I'd feel free. I feel sick admitting that. I am struggling so much and noone apart from DH and my counsellor has any idea. to the outside world we are fine and that's so painful because inside I feel like a monster.

I think your OP is the first one in 5 years of Mumsnetting that has actually made me cry - it brings back memories of me feeling much the same about my DD when she was tiny (she's my only one).

What your describing sounds very like PND, and perhaps it's just taking longer to deal with as you have your DS1 to look after too. If you feel the meds/counselling are not working for you, speak to your GP again and see if there's anything else you can try.

I get very boring recommending it on every PND/bonding thread I post on but 'Life After Birth' by Kate Figes is a brilliant book that is very reassuring about the fact that bonding isn't always easy - there is no shame in that and it doesn't make you a bad person. You might be a bad person if you didn't care but you so obviously do, and I really hope it starts coming together for you soon.

FWIW I got there eventually - my DD is 8.5 now and is my best mate as well as my daughter .

i know, and that's why you need help... please don't be too ashamed to take it, your life could be so much better than this, it's there for the taking with the right support.

i know a few people with funpods for their kids to cook with, helps to keep things interesting. 14 months might be a bit challenging with a sling, i'm realising.

I did not mean you have not recognised the importance....I meant you have recognised it :)

such a good no-brainer point from Tiktok re the meds and counselling not working. 7 months is a long, fair shake to give them... now ask for something different.

:(

You are sharing how desperate you feel about this, secret....it's painful.

The counselling is not working - after 7 mths, if you are still mostly weeping in sessions, then it's time to find a different source of help.

I think books and ideas of what to do with your ds2 are a part of the changes you can make, but not enough, and will not work quickly enough.

Thank you all. You are all being far too kind and gentle with me. I expected a few 'pull yourself together, your child deserves better' comments to be honest. I feel so ashamed and so sad all the time. Even when he's not whinging or crying to be picked up I don't really feel any attachment to him. It's a bit like looking after a stranger every day. I look at him and I think he's cute and gorgeous looking but that he's not really mine. Lije he could be anybody's baby and I'm just looking after him temporarily. when it dawns on me that he's mine I feel just sadness that I am responsible for this little boy who I don't love or know. He must pick up on this surely. I have probably already done untold damage to him. No wonder he moans a lot. He's got good bloody reason to. Poor kid.

I am going to go back to the GP because you are all right. After 7 months of fortnightly counselling sessions and ADs I still fell no different. I feel like I want my mind reprogramming! If I could just think differently maybe I'd allow myself to feel something for him. It's very hard to change the way you think though...probably not even possible. Poor baby.

I feel so sorry for him and the childhood he will have with me being so distant. My own parents were very emotionally closed off and particularly after my mum died when I was 8, I felt no real connection to my father at all. All 4 of us were just the 'collective kids', a problem to be dealt with, never seen as individuals or people with our own feelings and emotional needs. I never wanted that for my children but look at me. 25 years later and I'm doing the same thing to my own son. DS1 is the individual who lightens my day. DS2 is 'the baby' to be hushed up all the time.

Miaow our 14 month old often gets told the same with the walking! If I could just get him to the child bit where I can do things that are actually remotely interesting or rewarding. His favourite thing to do at the minute (apart from whining) is crawling at high speed into things head first and then either laughing or crying depending on how hard he hit himself. He is also rather fond of sockets so I have to have eyes in the back of my head because he can quite easily remove the socket guards we have but then he cries when I move him away.... 50 times a day.

none of this is fixed, though. (and babies ARE annoying.)

get better help. that's as close to 'pull yourself together' as i'm going to say.

So you have a 13 month old and a younger baby I bow down to you! How on earth are you doing this?! I am in awe of anyone with a small age gap. DS2 has nearly killed me, splitting myself in 2 constantly and that's with a nearly 4 year gap age difference.

and get better socket guards...

actually, on a practical note, get rid of them altogether. they're unsafe.

thank you again Aitch. Your last post actually made me smile. 'Babies are annoying'!!! I love that. I wish my friends saw it that way. I am so surrounded by friends and mothers who are ful of 'Ohh isn't this just the most amazing thing' 'Aren't babies adorable?' 'ohh I wish I could just freeze them as babies and not have to deal with the older child bit'... I sit on the outskirts feeling like a complete bitch because I look at my 5 year old and melt while I stare at my baby thinking 'wtf do you actually want?' Everyone seems to have such happy babbling babies while mine whinges and moans with frustration and I'm sat there thinking 'who the hell would enjoy this?' What exactly is there to enjoy? I am bored and irritated by him. The only plus side to having a baby is that I no longer have to carry my bags of shopping as I can hang them on the pushchair. I genuinely do feel that which feels so out of sync to how my friends feel.

Ahh I have heard reently about them being unsafe actually. Is that true? If so what do I do?? He loves sockets!

yep, i'm not a baby person either. mine are now 4 and 7 and it's so much more fun, i swear. you sleep more, they are better company, you can make them watch endless episodes of Dr Who and discuss them with you, what's not to like?

dunno re socket guards, have a search on here. apparently we don't need them in the UK. anyway, all of our sockets are full of plugs, haha.

Oh huge hugs for you miaow, both ours have been awful little babies. Both just wanted to be carried about in the sling upright but I couldn't sit down with them as it upset them so I walked for miles with them. They've both been very miserable little Victor Meldrews! In fact DS1 now has a very serious disposition but he's funny with it. He's like a little old man in a child's body. He's fab. DS2 still has that Victor Meldrew thing going on but is loud and protests to everything and anything. He's hrowing mini tantrums now...but CONSTANTLY over whatever happens to be frustrating him. It's sad to see him like that but it's so wearing and draining when it just doesn't seem to be getting any easier.

Glad you are going back to the GP - do it soon :)

It's great people are being understanding and supportive, but truly, what you are experiencing is not a question of not being a baby person, or not having known ds2 for long, or him being annoying (as babies and toddlers certainly are ) and he won't be annoying forever etc etc.

I worry that 'normalising' your situation and your feelings or making them sound temporary or manageable means that people like you don't seek help.

There is help, it does work, and it means you and your baby can be happy. You already know the consequences of it not being fixed from your own life.....you take it seriously enough to be unhappy and desperate about it. If you want to know more, google infant mental health or child and adolescent mental health services. This is therapy which mends relationships, not just the mother/parent. And it is effective.

oh yes that's true, tiktok, there is clearly a continuum of these behaviours and Secrets is at the extreme end of it at the moment. With help, though, better help than she is receiving at the moment, there is all to play for.

Totally right, Aitch. Secrets indicated she thought it would not be possible for things to be different, and it absolutely is.

In fact, of all the talking/counselling/psychoanalytic therapies, infant mental health interventions which treat the mother and the baby as a unit come out very successfully and they work quickly....because of the plasticity of the infant/toddler brain. Their effectiveness depends on intervening soon.

I totally understand what you're saying about not feeling 'connected'. I knew my DD was very sweet (when she wasn't being a screaming, colicky little banshee!) but it all seemed very abstract and unreal - I didn't actually feel it iykwim?

I have a photo of her taken when she was about 5 months and it's really special to me as it's the first one I can remember looking at and feeling that 'rush' you're supposed to feel the minute they pop out.

Has any of your counseling dealt with your own childhood? I wonder if you were so determined not to repeat history with your first born that you've kind of exhausted your emotional reserves?

I think you may have hit the naill on the head there DumSpiro I was so determined to make DS1's life everything that mine wasn't. I wanted it all to be perfect which I do realise is unattainable but DS2 is the 'problem' that I see making DS1's life less than perfect. Does that make sense? Maybe not. It feels like DS2 restricts all my time and puts a dampner on all the fun things me and DS1 used to do. I have made an appointment at the doctor's for next tuesday. I am just hoping they don't just up the dose of AD's and leave me to it. I need to speak to someone who can help. I had my counselling session this afternoon and she wants to refer me for Cognitive Behavoural Therapy which 'm not sure I understand what it is but I figure it can't do any harm at this point.

Secrets, CBT is not known for helping in this situation. If you do get CBT, make sure you explain fully to the therapist what your issues are and how worried you are that your ds is being affected. The therapist may consider whether a different form of therapy would be more suitable for you.

CBT can be helpful with depression. But treating depression in this situation may not be sufficient.