"Life with a new baby is shit, you hate your dh/dp and you hate your life" - do you really all agree with that?

[emkana]

don't want to go into this on the Cathy O'Neill thread, but just wanted to pick up on what marthamoo said there and ask for general opinions on this - is that really what you all feel/felt?

I don't want to p*ss everybody off by going on about how wonderful I found early parenthood - but I do remember that after having dd1 I was just ecstatic at how wonderful she was, how much I loved her, how I felt I had found the meaning of life... it was just completely mind-blowing.
Yes, I was tired etc. but I felt the happiest I had ever felt. I have found things much harder since having more than one, but again with dd2 it was less new babyhood that got me down, but the later stages, when she became a toddler, and all the issues that came along with that... tantrums etc., how to discipline successfully, feeling inadequate in my parenting...

but i just love new babies... sigh...
(and ds is eight months already...)

I'd agree that it is pretty bad, and I don't think this is to do with expectations. I think in my case it was to do with the complete absence of any family support and the grinding lack of sleep combined with the torture of listening to crying.

Just because a time is hard doesn't mean there aren't wondeful moments, just as having the best time of your life can be interspersed with stress.

I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders when each dd got to 1 year old. Like it had stopped raining on my soul or something.

Give me another year and I will have blanked out the bad memories and will have the rose tinted specs firmly on again.

Then I will start making scrapbooks etc and looking at baby feet pictures with nostalgia.

I enjoyed things on the whole. I liked the slight chaos and I was lucky.

yes I LOVED the chaos

was a state of grace in normally military-run household (see thread about anal dh )

God I think ds1's baby years were the most organised of my life. Now its chaos!

My first baby (DD) is 5 weeks now and I wouldn't say it is shit but it is a massive shock to the system and at times terrifying and devastating that you looked forward to having a baby for the whole pregnancy (and before)and it is so much harder and stressful than you ever imagined.

I also feel a bit cheated that no-one who had been through it told me how horrendous it would be at times - everyone sends you cards and presents and expects you to be overjoyed when actually you are shattered, scared and stressed out! It's not very rewarding in the early days when the baby does not react to you and does nothing other than cry, sleep and poo!

Having said that, at 5 weeks I now feel like I know a bit more what I am doing and getting the ouse back in order, but I am taking huge comfort from everyone on this thread who says that it DOES get better - please let that be true!

I think hormonal differences affect the way women react to birth. After ds1 was born I was high for about 3 weeks. His birth had been great, he slept better than most newborns (at night that is) Dh and I were entranced and loved up.

6-8 weeks later I started to feel a paranoia/panic thing set in- I had a baby who still slept pretty well at night but wouldn't during the day, was cranky and overtired & we had feeding problems. I cracked up completely for a couple of days when he spent 1 night waking every hour and a half and a woman at the breastfeeding clinic told me to 'get some rest, you're looking a bit tired'

The real fog of horror set in when I went back to work. I just couldn't adjust to working all day, and then all evening and some of the night as well. I was furiously angry all the time, often with dh and especially when he stayed out drinking or at restaurants with his colleagues- how dare he when I was dealing with a baby who would scream for an hour before falling asleep and couldn't be left alone for 5 minutes in the day? I hated myself, him and the world and was convinced there must be something wrong with ds1, he was a problem child. I think some of this had to do with weaning and the return of my cycle.

I 100 per cent agree, for me. But it all depends on the birth you have, the baby you get and the relationship you have with dh/dp. I had a horrible, traumatic birth and a very tough baby initially. I was so jealous of friends who had babies who just ate and slept, mine refused to settle ever. And it depends how important sleep is to you, to me it's vital and I'm only really on top form after nine hours, some people can cope fine on three or four, lucky, lucky them! But the worst thing was the lack of perspective, I honestly feared my life would be like this forever, permanently exhausted and worrying about why my child cried so much. As soon as she started to get really responsive around 8 weeks, things improved hugely and then she started to sleep long night stretches around 12 weeks, in the end I had an easier ride than a lot of friends whose babies were still waking in the night at six months or later. So from 8 weeks or so things were bearable and from 12 weeks they were a joy. Going to go through it all again in May and preparing for the worst, while knowing however bad it will be, the baby will soon be as adorable as its sister is now with all her toddler foibles. Think anyone pg should be gently warned of worse-case scenarios though!

I so loathed it all I cannot express in words how much I hated, detested and despised almost every minute of it.

I hated my life with a newborn so yes I agree but I don't agree with the hate my dp/dh bit. I never hated him in fact he was the one who kept me sane through the whole thing

Toddlerhood is a breeze compared to the new born stage for me (Sorry did I say how much I HATED the newborn stage ...)

Just goes to show how different we all are

Also expectations have nothing to do with it for me. I never expected the newborn stage to be great. I always thought it would be hard work etc - it was just so much worse than I could ever have imagined

Oooh, that gave me a real lurch when I saw that, emkana.

I know it's not true for everyone - I was typing fast and without much thought as it was a "live chat". But it was absolutely true for me and it still makes me very sad when I think about it. Also quite envious of people who have good memories of that new baby time.

I did have severe PND, of course - though I know from talking to friends that it can be hellish even without PND.

I didn't love ds1. I felt nothing for him - absolutely nothing. Actually, that's not quite true - I didn't want any harm to come to him - I just didn't want him. If someone had come to the door and said there had been a mistake and I wasn't actually supposed to have a baby I would have packed his bags and said goodbye to him. I was in a permanent daze - I stopped eating, I lost about 3 stone in 6 months. I couldn't sleep - even when ds1 did sleep (which wasn't often - he was not an 'easy' baby) I would lie awake, my heart racing, feeling unbearably anxious, and just stare at the ceiling. Dh and I just had no relationship at all - I couldn't function in the way I had before. In the end, things got so bad that I pretty much left him: ran home to Mum and Dad and just came back at weekends. I think if I hadn't had that safety net I would have ended up in a psychiatric unit. The downside was that it nearly destroyed us as a couple - when ds1 was about 6 months old dh turned up at my parents' house and demanded that I came home and pretty much dragged us back home, with me sobbing hysterically. Dh must have felt awful - he said later it was like he lost us both. He'd already lost me: I'd gone into hospital to have a baby and this woman he barely recognised came home - and then she disappeared and took his baby with her. And I did hate him - he didn't/couldn't understand and he was quite cruel to me (without meaning to be - he thought I could "pull myself together"). He told me afterwards that he thought if he "left me to it" I would rise to the challenge: sink or swim. I sank. I don't blame him now - I think a lot of men are like that - they want to 'fix' things; be practical. He was on a steep learning curve too.

Me - the person I had been - was gone. I was this weeping, dishevelled mess. I didn't wash; I didn't get dressed. I didn't talk - I would sit in the living room for 2 hours without speaking and glance at the clock thinking "I should say something" - but I couldn't think of anything to say. I breast-fed ds1 and that is all I did: tbh, that was kind of my lifeline. It was the one thing I did do for him - and without that, I felt I really might as well not have been there. I didn't cuddle him, I didn't sing to him, I didn't bath him or change his nappy: I fed him and handed him over to dh or my Mum.

I thought I'd made the most terrible mistake of my life - that my life was over. I felt like that for a long time. The first 6 months were unremitting hell, the next 6 months were not much better. There were many, many times when I wished I was dead - and I truly believed everyone - especially ds1 - would be better off without me. I didn't really feel like 'me' again until ds1 was 2. And that's not true either: that 'me' is gone. I had to learn how to be someone else. I think I'm a better person for that experience - I'm a different one, that's for sure. And - the only way I would go through that again for would be for my children .

But for me, yes, "life with a new baby is shit, you hate your dh/dp and you hate your life" does pretty much sum it up. I think I will always feel very sad about that time in my life - I wish it had been different.

Don't regret it marthamoo- just look forwards- or look back to when it did begin to get better- you survived something that sounds dreadful

FWIW I look back on my idyllic first year with ds1 and think "you fool, you fucking fool, how stupid can you have been not to see what was coming, idito for enjoying it so much" (or words to that effect- I can think twisted thoughts about it for quite some time). So I don't really think about it, babyhood is the time they don't remember anyway.

Marthmoo - your post makes me and a lot of it rings true for me too.

Although I didn't leave I remeMber saying to dh when ds was about 3 weekS old. 'Take him away'. Dh said 'I'll take him for a walk and you get some sleep'. I replied ' No take him away for good' . 'What is the point of a couple of hours sleep - I want my life back'. I am to say it now and it pains me to think how often I said I wanted to leave or have someone take ds away. I probably said it daily. Breastfeeding for me too was the main reason I stayed too.

Now I look at ds and can't believe I felt like that but I did for about 6 months. then it slowly started to improve.

That was truly awful for you Marthamoo- and it's terrible that we don't get to hear stories like yours very often outside of mumsnet, because surely if we did, there would be better social support for mothers of young babies, or at least people would not expect a rosy, blooming, coping mother to emerge overnight?

For me it was a bit of both. sometimes great, sometimes stressful (sometimes a bit tedious). My biggest problems were the huge sense of responsibility and the fact that dh didn't seem to feel the way I did ( he didn't have the anxiety or the joy). It all got easier as DS grew and DD came along.

Disagree. Admit dp's can be fairly spare part ish on the whole in the first 6 wks, but if yours will cook, clean and help with the other kids, you can avoid the urge to kill him... usually.
I'm 37 wks pregnant with 3rd child , all I cna be is optimistic
I do have a lovely dp though and a very helpful 13 yr old ds and a very easy 4 yr old dd.

Just loved the baby stage. It was so exciting and wonderful for me with both. Agree with emkana-the toddler stage was much more difficult particularly with ds!
But I had babies that slept through very quickly and so did not have to struggle with sleep deprivation for too long.

martha that is a very honest post but very sad indeed.
What we take for granted sometimes huh.

That is a wonderful post, marthamoo. I am so sorry you went through that but so in awe that you came through it. You always come across as a spectacularly wonderful loving parent.

fio you're shocked

Moo that sounds awful - MI has spoken of her awful baby fog before so I knew the affect it had on her, but I had no idea that you had been through such a tough time

I wonder what the factors are that make all our experiences so very different in the early months?

I suspect for me having two big babies (9lb 8oz) meant that they were able to sustain themselves through the night at a pretty early stage, thus the sleep issue was pretty negligable for me. Both were sleeping through the core hours of 12-6am from about 4 weeks old and even before that rarely woke more than once during those core hours to feed! Mainly as a function of tummy size I would imagine.