New born struggles

[Blak]

Hi, I’m my baby is a week old and I’m really struggling, not to parent- that is the easy part but with my thoughts and feelings. I am bonding with my baby but I keep getting intrusive and disturbing thoughts but I know I’d never hurt myself or her. I feel empty, like I don’t have a lot of feelings other than to cry. I’m breastfeeding but I’m very very sore and I have no energy and I feel like I’m losing too much weight.

Is there anyone out there that felt similar to me and how long did you feel this way. I just don’t know how long I can carry on like this.

I cant help you with personal experience about intrusive thoughts, but I did have huge waves of weepiness for a couple of weeks after the birth.

It sounds like you are experiencing feeling that are outside the expected new Mum adjustment. Can you give your GP a call and talk it through with someone medical? I know you could probably get some help to balance things out and then you could settle in to enjoying your LO a bit more

That all seems pretty familiar to me. It is probably the biggest life change you will go through and having given birth you have all kinds of hormones flying around. Your sleep is also completely messed up. If you feel the same way mention it at your 6 week check up, but things change day to day with a newborn so my guess would be you will very different. Take care of yourself and accept any offers of help.

Ha ha, first two posts say opposite things. To give an example of what I went through I was paranoid I would drop or bump my baby, I think I was a bit overwhelmed by the new responsibility. I also spent the first week waking up thinking I was in labour and would panic until I saw my baby in the basket next to me. By two weeks in all that had settled down.

@SeaToSki hi, thankyou for the reply, I have my 10 day check up on Saturday so was going to mention it then. I think it makes things harder with lockdown and me not having all the support I would of liked, for example, having my mum here.

@easterbuns I’m glad there is someone else that went through similar to what I’m feeling, I don’t think anyone tells you how hard it is to deal with hormones, the parenting part is easy.

I had tons of intrusive thoughts to begin with. One thing that might help you is to think of it in terms of your brain reacting to the level of responsibility you now have for this tiny helpless thing - it's not that you plan or want to happen your baby, it's just your mind being really alert to things that could be dangerous to them. If you're struggling and need support then definitely do tell a midwife/health visitor/GP, but please don't worry that you'll feel like this forever.

I would definitely mention it on Saturday.

Hi there @Persipan thankyou so much for the reply, makes me feel a lot better knowing that there’s other people that have gone through this. I know I’m bonding with my baby and I have so much love towards her, I would never put her in harms way which is why these thoughts have become a bit of a shock to me and also very upsetting for me.

You poor thing, I can sympathise as I suffered from postnatal anxiety after the birth of my first baby and this was accompanied by lots of intrustive thoughts. These were all related to baby loss / sids / various horrible things happening to my baby and I found them very disturbing. For me they ‘made sense’ in a way as I had experienced all these things professionally and so it was hard for me to talk myself out of them. I remember vividly one night where I said ‘oh I had better not put him in that babygrow, if he wears that he won’t wake up’.

I can assure you that intrustive thoughts of all kinds are something that mental health professionals and midwives / health visitors are used to encountering in new mothers. As with all things though it is the degree to which they occur, what symptoms they occur alongside and your general wellbeing that would dictate the approach taken by health professionals. They can occur in degrees from normal variant to full blown postnatal psychosis (a medical and psychiatric emergency) and none of us are in a position to assess where on the spectrum you fall.

Please please call your midwife / gp and tell them how you are feeling - being explicit about the intrusive thoughts. And please be open and honest about your feelings to your family / partner.

You will get through this, it is no reflection on you as a person or your skills as a mother, and I promise you that you are not alone in experiencing this.

I found it all very overwhelming -def at 1 week. My baby is now 3 and half weeks and I have good days and bad days but I do think it’s getting easier the more used to things I’m getting. Best of luck and def talk to your HV.

I felt very similar to you with my second baby; I told my midwife and they were absolutely amazing providing me with extra support for a month after my baby was born. I did end up being diagnosed with post natal depression as once it went on longer than 2 weeks that was what the GP said it had moved onto rather than baby blues but within a few weeks I was feeling so much better with the help I got from the midwives and GP. It was also a massive release to tell someone how I was feeling and to tell my husband and be reassured that it was normal and a lot of people feel that way and that I would get better