My bad childhood is making things hard

[Firsttimemum991]

I didn’t have a particular ‘good’ childhood. I know everything is relative, and I did have good times but, generally, my parents were both emotionally unavailable.
I have struggled a lot in my teenage and early twenties because of this, but have come a long way with therapy and done a lot of healing.
I was basically raised by the complete opposite of Attachment Parenting. My mum admitted she sleep trained me when I was 8 weeks old. I was always scared of my parents and did not trust them at all.

Now I have recently became a mother myself and am finding my childhood trauma come back to me. He’s 7 months old. I respond to him quickly because I know how important it is for him in order to develop a secure attachment to me. But now I’ve realised I’m getting in the way of my baby and husbands bond. Baby settles with me and does not with my husband. I’m sure this is because I’m at home with baby most the time and I also take care of all the night wakings because I’m breastfeeding.

Husband told me that he feels I’m stopping him from forming a bond with our son. Sometimes if he’s crying and he is trying to settle him, I will go and take him off him because I can’t bear to hear him cry when I know he will stop crying if I take him. I agree with my husband and realise that I need to take a step back and let him find his own techniques to soothe him. Even tho this completely makes sense to me, I still feel so guilty about doing it. I feel like I’m betraying my baby and am a bad mother.
Can someone reassure me that baby will not be harmed by crying whilst husband learns to soothe him?

Your baby will not be harmed by a little crying at all, especially crying while being tended to. I was the same way with my firstborn it's really common, our brains are literally rewired to attune to our babies' needs, sometimes to an overanxious level. It sounds like you're great parents, the attachment issues you're worried about don't come from a baby fussing or crying sometimes, they come from things like emotional or physical neglect it doesn't sound like you're anywhere near in the realm of that. It's hard but try to relax and please read up on attachment.... It's not so delicate that not immediately stopping any and all crying will harm it.

Oops please ignore the strike through 😅. That was by mistake...

Babies cry as a way of communication. Let your husband have some time alone with baby. Go for a little walk, even take a little nap.
they will both be learning together and baby will be ok.

it’s good that your husband has pointed this out and he wants to form that bond. Baby needs to know who his safe people are, the fact he has both of you.
you are not a bad mother. A chance to let your husband be the baby whisperer means that you can have a break

My daughter would never settle with DH until she was over a year old - she just didn’t!

We had to start with playing games with him sat ignoring her then build up to joining in and then me stepping back and building that time up - once she was happy to play we moved on to other things.

It’s easy I suppose to take the path of meat resistance but ultimately she’s safer in two hands rather than one.