Has parenting affected your mental health?

[NutsinMay]

There seems to be a lot of links about Mental Health affecting your ability to parent but nothing about parenting affecting your mental health(beyond post natal depression).

Yet although there have been times in my life when I've felt low, anxious, possibly more than that, I've never felt as anxious, stressed, neurotic, controlling, irritable, occasionally close to the edge as I have had since having children. I have no desire to have a relationship or go out (beyond doing stuff with the children as they are always much easier when out).

I do work part-time and that provides some relief but I wish weekends were something to look forward to like they used to be pre-children. Now they are the most tiring shifts of the week.

Having one was fine and didn't change me or my life that much (and I had a high needs baby) but having two for me is a whole another level.

I am tired very tired. I've not had an uninterupted night's sleep for about 5 years so I think that might be a major contributor but I find the fighting between siblings, the noise, the whining, the whinging- the demands of "mummy" shrieked in stereo are occasionally just too much to bear. I sobbed in front of them this morning because I just wanted them to leave each other alone. I sometimes fear picking up by daughter from school as I just don't the energy to cope with the afterschool grumpiness/meltdown/rudeness.

I know parenting isn't easy and I'm full of admiration for those who have more than two, do it alone or unsupported or have children with complex needs.

I do hear stories of women locking themselves in the bathroom to escape their kids and I know a lot of women got by on valium in the 70s and laudenum in the 1870s(or earlier) so I know it's not uncommon.

But I'm wondering why there isn't more written about this? Is the stress etc actually doing damage to my physical health? Is it normal? Does anyone else think they are going mad?

Thankfully, they are out with DP this afternoon as I've been on the go since 6.

I was cheated on and it was vile but I remember my first night alone with dd and I thought "this is ok he's not here to NOT HELP so I'm less irritated"
I thrived as a LP if I'm honest but I did have my amazing so s to help and babysit.
When I got remarried I gained a great husband but also unfortunately his family (who are emotionally void but like to be around each other a lot)
Dh was already living in my town so it wasn't me who took him.
Of course he then moved into my large family home with a spare room and they now have to come and stay.
I won't bang on about it but that is our biggest marriage woe.
They aren't my type (very formal) and I really dislike the intrusion of weekend stays or pressure to go to theirs.
IM TOO BLOODY TIRED.
Came to a head at weekend and I've told him to take more responsibility to see family without having to involve me.
So jolly my massive sympathys.
Anyone feel slightly more positive after this thread?
I got up quite determined to get through the day more effectively.
Prob won't last though

yy to formula. I bf to 6 months because I always do what I am told (good girl syndrome) but then thankfully stopped with enormous relief. I sleep trained too; DS going to bed at 7pm is my saviour. Expecting baby 2 in a few weeks and dreading the feeding adn sleep - DH and I have a plan just to look ahead to Christmas and survive till then.

I agree with you Morris entirely - DH does do 50%, and about 25% of the mental work, and I am still knackered.

As an aside on the bf, I believe that the recent emergence of attachment parenting is the latest way the patriachy are keeping us in our place. No-one expected women in the 50s to be attachment mothers. Now we are getting uppity and all of a sudden we are expected to devote ourselves entirely to a child for 3 years, feeding and co-sleeping etc? I am suspicious! But that is probably another thread.

Yes, bigkidsdidit: I'm also deeply suspicious of attachment parenting. There's a book by a French feminist arguing exactly your point that it's all about getting uppity women to know their place (and just coincidentally be left unable to compete at work).

I hated breast feeding with a passion I can barely articulate. Seeing as this is a brutally honest thread I will share with you the appalling thought I had in hospital when DS was born. I thought I wish I was young and uneducated, so I could breezily give my baby formula milk and nobody would bat an eye.

In the end, I struggled on til three months when my lentil weaving, breast advocating mother said to me for gods sake stop killing yourself, give him a bottle, he'll be fine. It was probably the most liberating thing anybody has ever said to me in my life. I still had a breakdown mind, but at least by the time it happened my son could be given sustenance by any of the very many people in his life who love him dearly.

Fuck breast feeding. No really. Fuck it to hell and back for the woman breaking fucker that it is.

sauceforthegander "It's like I'm fucking starving and you're having a roast fucking dinner"
YY. I have sometimes thought about living with a snorer that it is like sitting down, starving, next to someone tucking into a delicious dinner, who swipes all your food to the floor as he sits down.

I feel AMAZINGLY more positive after this thread [hopes my poor pity fest didn't strike others when down though]

It's good to KNOW things are shit, but to carry on anyway, KNOWING we're doing a stupendous job in the circs.

Yes, my last baby was a bottle refuser. I get really angry on bf threads when people give crappy advice which won't work about mixed feeding because being stick ebf when you don't want to is HELL.

I had that through all of 2012. We had a days Olympics tickets and I couldn't go because DS (6mo) had a fever. I couldn't even swap with DH and do half a day each because I have the boobs. It had to be me. I left him with my sister and went for the afternoon anyway in the end. I nearly fell asleep in the stadium, was exhausted and He cried the whole 6hours I was away.

Agreed, Morris. I'm not stupid enough to have any more children, but if I were I would definitely FF. I utterly hated breastfeeding and got trapped doing it for far longer than I wanted or planned because DS would not take a bottle, ever. We literally starved him for 36 hours and he still wouldn't (not proud of that episode).

Ah Dogs I expect I saw a review of that book somewhere - in my sleep deprived state it's unlikely I had that thought myself

don't suppose you remember her / its name? I'd like to read it.

Actually I do feel better after posting on here too!

For me, I really love family friends - they are my happy place. Friends with kids round all day, throw kids into garden sit around chatting with parents. Summer is my happy time.

'Just express' they tell you. Marvellous advice. Express precious breast milk then experience the joy of tipping it down the sink when yet again, angry baby refuses bottle and gets so wound up you have to get em out again. That's ok, it's not like I have anywhere I'd like to be apart from this stinking sofa.

Her name is Elisabeth Badinter - I can't remember the title of the book, I'm afraid, but Google should provide!

thanks

I have to say DH does probably more of the grunt work when he's home atm, but I do a lot of it when he's not here, and I do 99% of the PAing, which boils my piss, but is harder to sort out when he is happy to do the other stuff.

It is still tough.

I felt forced into breastfeeding and had such an enormous guilt trip when I finally had to give up when DD was seven months due to health reasons. I don't remember enjoying any of those first seven months as I was so ill with the hormones. I was like a stick with enormous boobs and just feeding constantly. Exhausted and and vulnerable and nervous wreck sums it up. The health visitors (2 0f them) came when I was struggling when DD was about 10 days old and they told me it would be my fault if she got eczema if I stopped breastfeeding. It was MY responsibility for her future. Well she got eczema anyway and I was very ill with my own eczema due to hormones.

After that experience and also DD's difficult birth towards the end I decided against a second child. She was stuck and had the cord wrapped round her so every contraction cut off her oxygen. It was horrendous for that last half hour. Her apgar scores were very low and the worry was horrendous. I think I suffered PTS from the experience it was so bad. I still can't talk about it without getting upset 7 years on.

Reading this with great interest, I agree with so many of the themes here MIL, worry about my MH, loosing the plot in front of the DC and worrying about the years this parenting lark is adding to me!

Very interesting to hear about difficult 4/5yr olds as when I expressed this to other mums on the playground I was met with looks of surprise when I commented about DD tiredness in Reception (I didn't even bother after that to express how horrid 3.30 - 7pm could be, everyone else seemed to be doing visits to the park and play dates, I could just about get her home).

Please keep this going with a support thread.

Galaxymum, that sounds utterly terrifying.

Clutter, just wanted to come back to your Thor-in-Church story - didn't mean to be insensitive but it is such an amazing image, so brilliantly put. However I also wanted to add that it sounds as if the people in your church recognise you are doing a great job, your dc is just "like that", and perfectly lovable in his own way, so please try not to worry about being asked to leave - it sounds as if they don't want you to feel bad, but the opposite.

Our priest talked about his own childhood as a terror who would climb the pews and is sympathetic to parents (and is one, but it sounds like you might be Catholic, so if yours is that will be a deep dark secret! I used to be Catholic so hope you don't mind the joke, still feel like I am allowed to joke about Catholics as you can take the p out of your own family, but maybe not).

Anyway a little more rambling about going to church: it occurred to me, when I joined our church choir in a state of musical starvation, that the church would once have performed a very important role in bringing quasi-professional music once a week to people who would never have heard it any other way, being unable to afford concerts or to get anywhere further than walking distance. How nice it must have been to sit and be sung to, when you could never even put the radio in normal life. And I decided not to question that material comforts that going to church brings: yes, breaking up the day as you say; sitting down; hearing music; in my case, sunday school, so only the little dc with me; an excuse to put on something half way smart; people to chat to afterwards; etc. There was a part of me that saw all that as superficial stuff that it was sinful to enjoy but then I thought, fuck it, the church knows what it is doing, it knows why it is here for us. take it and see what you can offer the other people there, chat to an old dear or something

I completely agree about the prevalence of ADs. We are papering over some bloody major cracks in feminism, I think.

Yyy curryeater. I'm atheist to my core but I love a good tune as much as the next girl, and church people can be very welcoming with the juice and biscuits etc. Old dears adore seeing kids muck about in church, lets face it, they love seeing anybody under the age of seventy in church. Also with a boy you can play up the adorable scamp thing. Wrong, but really, quite right.

I loved bfing dc2 after an easy birth during ehich i had tons of support.

I could NOT bf dc1 after horrendous, long labour then forceps birth in understaffed London hospital with v little support & v inexperienced staff. I could not sit up, dc had (obv in retrospect) v sore head and as it later turned out feeding difficulties due to his yet to be diagnosed SN.

Yet, EVERYBODY- dh, MIL, dm, mws and bloody patronizing nct bfing helpline told me to try harder, keep trying. In other words completely and utterly down to me, my fault if it didn't work, nothing at all to do with individual baby or the horrendous -unacknowledged - damage done with forceps to us both. Years on i still fume at the memory and the total fucking lack of support for us. Imagine as if the male equivalent of forceps damage. Would they be expected to function normally plus race around after and feed new baby???? Or would they be on several days even weeks enforced bed rest with someone ELSE looking after baby and mo pressure to bf due to nature of birth.

Ledkr, in answer to your question, this thread is brilliant because so many great mothers have put such strong writing on it, and that makes me feel really positive. But on the other hand I worry that expressing myself to you lovely people gives me an outlet that disinclines me to address issues irl (ie the non-communication with dp). but actually it is a brilliant way to hang on and feel less terrible while I work out how to address it.

Thank god for this thread. I have 3 dc who are 5,4 and 19mths and I feel like I have gone crazy. The constant mummy mummy mummy and whining. I can't concentrate on anything. As soon as I start something the toddler is hanging off my clothes and the older 2 scrapping.
I work partime as a nurse and feel intolerant of the noise and people calling my name and 2 different people talking to me at a time. I used to thrive at work but now I just more headfuck.

I feel like I am shaking all the time - not necessarily physically but that high adrenaline feeling. There is always a mess to clear up, loads of cleaning or washing to do,reading to do, meals to get. I am mentally and physically exhausted.

I really thought it would be improving by now but I feel as down as I did 2 years ago.

Salbertina: yy to birth injuries and what men would be expected to do.

A friend of mine has two small children and a dh who has suffered mental illness since his teens. Most of his adult life it was under control with meds but a certain amount of stress built up around the small children, he stopped sleeping, he sought help but was fobbed off onto a waiting list, and then he had a pyschotic episode and had to be restrained by police and taken to hospital. He recovered with treatment and when he came out of hospital he was told to go and live with his parents for a while and visit his children, so that he did not relapse under the stress. I know this was right and it must have been what he needed for his recovery but I have never ever heard of a mentally ill mother (PND or anything else) being advised to let someone else manage her family, and just dip in for the good bits, till she is better.

I've just remembered that after 5 weeks of trying to breastfeed my baby, coincidentally I went into work to show him off, and practically the first thing I said to a startled staff room was 'Well all this breast is best stuff is obviously a male plot to keep women in their place' - I was so exhausted and beaten, the filter just wasn't there...

I don't necessarily think that's true, I think there are heartfelt (not scientifically rigorous) reasons for pushing breastfeeding and that women for whom it's a breeze or a victory get so caught up in it that they get it way, way out of proportion. How many men are actually interested in it?

(And, isn't attachment parenting supposed to involve all available adults? I know the mother has to do the feeding but the carrying etc is for everyone to do, no?)

It's good that PND is as recognised as it is these days, but I find it odd that there's quite so much mention of hormones etc. as the cause of it, when there's also the major fact of being responsible 24/7 for a small dependent person ! This may ease gradually over time (mine are now 14 and 11, and beginning to get slightly less high maintainance) but it's a long road isn't it. I found two much harder to handle than one as well OP - and think this too seems to be minimised by society.
That's part of the reason for my NN - "Juggling" - I've felt I've been juggling different demands on me ever since becoming a mother, but especially since we had DS when DD was 2.6 yrs.
All the best to you
(DS is calling out for his weetabix now so have to go ....)