Baby four week old and I really don't think motherhood is for me .

[Lollyathome111]

Don't even know where to start and I've tried to talk to my own mum&boyfriend but they just don't get it.
I love my son but I just wish I didn't have to look after him I hate doing nappies , I suck at winding him , he twines all the time when he's with me , I struggle at doing the getting up with him through the night like I know and want to be so grateful to have him but I feel like he doesn't even like me, like the baby knows I'm shit.
What makes it worse is my other half is back at work next week so I'll have nobody to take over when it gets to much or just nobody to help /be there , I knew it would be hard but I really didn't think it would be like this . My parents / his help and they go on about how good he is , how he always sleeps but honestly he doesn't for me he's up every 2hours that's if he actually sleeps usually just lies down making noises spitting his dummy in and out ,then its time to get up again for next bottle 😴 when it gets to overwhelming our parents they do offer to have him but I really don't think it helps as it's another day of me not getting to grips with it all . It just takes him away it doesn't actually help me . I just feel moody , tired and just no patience at all . I don't have any friends , I just hate me as a person . I thought by now I'd get the hang of stuff but I haven't - I just feel useless .I actually think bf and my son would be better off without me as I think the baby senses I'm sad and I feel like I'm draining life out of bf which isn't fair like my mood is rubbing off on everyone I just don't know what I can do . I actually hate feeling like I'm one big whinge

Having a little baby really is shit, OP. It's so hard but you're doing really well. The baby doesn't sense you're sad, he's just making noises because that's what they do.

If he's crying a lot after feeding try keeping him upright, just in case he's getting indigestion (it's called silent reflux).

It will definitely get easier, and you'll look back on this time with a sense of wonder that you got through it.

Keep your expectations low and keep plodding on, a day at a time.

And, don't feel bad about not enjoying it. Parenting a tiny baby is a massive slog that can come as a huge shock to the system.

It will get better.

First step is to go a little easier on yourself here. For all he is yours, your baby is still pretty much a stranger. Whilst many women seem to be 100% bonded and in love from birth or before, many many women are not. It's totally fine to take time to find your feet with each other.

On top of that, your body is adjusting from the pregnancy and birth, your mind is adjusting to new responsibilities, and you've basically been handed (whilst recovering) a temperamental expensive and complicated machine that didn't come with any instructions.

Similarly, your baby will know very little about what he wants or needs. Go back to basics - lots of feeds, lots of cuddles, and being 100% gentle on yourself. If you and baby spend all day when your dh is back at work just hanging out and cuddling with whatever you like on TV, and nobody makes it out of their pjs, that's fine.

If, over the next few weeks, you still find yourself feeling sad, why not have a chat with the GP? Pregnancy and labour can dump a whole vat of new hormones onto use that can be incredibly overwhelming, and chatting these over with the GP can help. They may even think it worth you taking some meds to help lift you out of the sadness. That's for a few more weeks down the line.

For now, I'd just soften how you think about yourself as a mother, spend lots of time closely with the baby and remind yourself that you are both still getting to know each other.

Having a little baby isn’t ‘really shit’!! It’s hard and exhausting and at times you can feel like you’ll never do it ‘right’ but I hate it when people say oh it’s just shit.

OP I think you might need to reach out for some mental health support. It doesn’t mean you’re rubbish at all or doing anything wrong. And other people taking the baby (you are lucky to have that so utilise it) it IS helping you if you can use it to sleep, as if you’re not so exhausted you’ll be in a better state mentally.

It's shit for a lot of women. Doesn't mean there's something wrong.

It takes time to adjust to change and having a baby is a massive change.

This is a very common feeling, OP. Sending big hugs.

I remember DH coming downstairs at 3am and finding baby crying, and me crying, and just saying to him "What have we done?! We had such a nice life!" Obviously DD is now 19months and brings joy to us every day.

One thing i would say is whether you think there might be something more going on? PND is very common (i had it badly) and i wish I'd spoken up sooner to get help. So don't be afraid to ask your HV or GP for help.

He will not be better off without you - you are his mum and he will love you so much. But there's no denying these early nights are HARD.

If you feel not confident at winding, feeding etc, please do ask your HV for help. Our local children's centre has drop ins where you can go and get help witth things like this. Perhaps your HV can point you in the direction of your local ones?

Young babies are tiring and not especially interesting until they start to smile back and interacting. Lack of sleep is exhausting and somehow it feels worse this time of year as we dont get much daylight or good weather to get out of the house. Do speak to your health visitor or GP and ask for advice as you may have the start of PND which is very common with a young baby. Hope you feel better soon

I hear you and was where you are. When I had my first I felt like a bomb had gone off in my life and that I was a rubbish mother. That I never knew what to do and was just on an exhausting merry go round.

If someone had offered to take her and look after her I would have been relieved.

Please believe me when I say it won't be like this forever. It probably feels like this will last for eternity but it will pass. I vividly remember feeling just like you and mine is 15 now!

Ask for help, especially from keen grandparents. Try and get out for a walk even if it's just 15 minutes. Keep an eye on yourself and if you need extra support for your mental health (I got PND but that passed too) talk to your gp/HV.

I promise it gets better, just keep on keeping on.

OP would be sensible to have her mental health evaluated but unless you have a great deal of help I think having a new baby really can be very difficult.
Some people enjoy babies and others don't OP.
For better or worse no individual stage with a child lasts that long, so this will pass.

You've had some good advice about the practical things. I just wanted to add this; when my daughter is born I didn't feel that rush of overwhelming love that I thought you were supposed to feel. In a lot of ways I felt trapped, overwhelmed and to some degree as if I had ruined my life.

My girl is now 15 months. I very slowly fell in love with her, and now I am absolutely besotted with her, I love her more than I ever thought it was possible to love someone and she's the greatest joy in my life. It's still tough, but I've toughened up, and I found you get a lot more back from an older baby/toddler than from a newborn potato.

How you are feeling is not unusual, and it should get so much better as your baby grows. Make sure you are asking for help and opening up about how you feel for now.

@pbdr Yes I remember exactly those feelings

I won't repeat everything everyone else has said as they have put it far more eloquently than I could, but it's a very common feeling. As a pp said I also didn't get that rush of love, it took a long time to gradually get there and for several weeks I genuinely felt if someone had offered to take her off my hands or somehow wind everything back a year I would have done it. I adore her now and went on to have another so although it's tough I promise it gets easier. Some people are real baby people and for others (me included) it felt like a stage to get through to get to the 'fun bit' and that's ok too. What really helped me was getting out ALOT with other mums, sometimes I felt worse as they all seemed to have super content babies Vs my reflux baby who screamed most of the time but it meant I could chat to grownups and kill some time, when I was at home I would largely binge boxsets while cuddling at that age.

Be gentle with yourself, absolutely nothing can prepare you for the upheaval to your life, body and brain but I promise you're doing better than you think you are ❤️❤️

I certainly didn't enjoy those first few weeks in the slightest, I found it completely shocking and overwhelming.

I did not get the rush of love when he arrived and I was just going through the motions probably until he was about 10 weeks old.

It's so bloody hard.

I didn't have the negative thoughts about myself that you're having though. I think that might be a little PND talking. I would speak to your midwives or GP and see if you can be get some counselling. Even if you don't have PND it's always good to talk.

Having a baby is a huge transition and it's rarely rainbows and butterflies in my experience.

My first dd made loads of noises during the night and I literally couldn't sleep at all. Dh could sleep through it, i think it's a mum thing as we are so tuned in to them. I swapped places with my partner so he was right next to her and could wake me up if she actually fully woke up for a feed rather than me jumping up at every single sniffle.

I'd definitely check in with a doctor to get evaluated for PND, but also want to say that I loathed the baby phase and went back from maternity leave early because I found it such a grind.

I'm baffled that anyone enjoys it tbh, it's just endless nappy changing (yuk), feeding, winding and no sleep. Like a really shit groundhog day. I felt fat and tired and leaky and bored.

I really hit my stride once DS got to about 6 months and we could properly interact. Now he's a 3.5 and I love it, the toddler/preschool stage is so much fun.

Babies are boring and hard work. But you do need to tell your HV or GP how you are feeling, so they can assess you for PND.
Ask your parents for help, then get out the house. Go to a coffee shop, a browse round the shops, or to the gym.
And look at getting back to work.

Newborn babies are incredibly hard work considering they just lie there all day!
What you're feeling isn't unusual so don't tell yourself you're a bad Mum. Speak to your health visitor if you have one, they're able to help and support you.
It does get easier, in that you will feel more confident and your baby will respond more to you - once they start smiling and enjoying the world it's easier to forgive the broken sleep.
You are still healing from giving birth and your baby is getting used to being out in the world, that's a bit of a shock too.
I didn't feel the massive rush of love for my baby either, but it did grow and now she's the best (teenager) ever.
Look after yourself too.

It’s really really hard, you are not alone in feeling like this. I used to dread nighttime, I’d start crying when it got dark. It’s also such a huge life change, it takes a while to adjust to it. It really does get better though, your baby is still tiny and things will improve. It’s very early days.
Do speak to your GP though as it sounds like you’re having negative thoughts. I promise you - you are doing so much better than you think, you are not useless and no one is better off without you.

OP like everyone has said these feelings are so common. I definitely could have written your post. The first twelve weeks with a newborn are pretty unbearable for lots of (most?) people. Take it literally hour by hour and the days will pass and you will get there. You aren't doing a bad job and your baby doesn't think you're shit. Your baby thinks you are the whole world.

You have had an avalanche of hormones fall on you and it takes time to adjust to them, and to fall in love with your baby. But you will get there and until you do just congratulate yourself on surviving each day and trust that nature will do it's thing in due course.

when DS was about 4 weeks old, I found myself walking around the neighbourhood with him in a pram, tears absolutely pouring down my face as I thought about all the ways in which having a baby was the worst idea I'd ever had.

In retrospect, there is no doubt I had some PND. And it becomes a bit of a self perpetuating thing because you're so tired and anxious, the smallest thing makes you wake up/disturbs you and then you're even more tired and anxious.

I would second speaking to a GP. They might not do anything in the first instance, but it gets the ball rolling.

I found a babysitter who came and had DS for 4 hours once a week. I didn't do a LOT during that time, but it helped that I wasn't sitting on edge waiting for him to cry.

DH was amazing and your DH needs to step up. He would come home from work immediately and take over for a while. Often he would send off to the big sainsburys as it was the one place I could get a coffee or be inside at that time of night and he would do bed and bath time.

The broken sleep nearly killed me. Again, DH or my mum would have DS until about mightnight/1am while I went to bed early. Then, it had been a bad night (usually it was) anytime DS woke after about 5:30, DH would handle. He'd often bring him downstairs and he'd snooze in his pram while DH snoozed on the couch, or he'd put him in a sling and do some chores. He would keep him until 20 minutes before he left for work at which point he'd b ring me a cup of tea so that I had af ew minutes to wake up before I was back on duty.

Also, my BF told me repeatedly that it starts to get better at 6 weeks. Then again at 12. she was right.

Good luck. It IS hard. You are not a bad mum for feeling this way.

I think you sound especially low and would benefit from talking to your GP/HV about what support they can offer you. Don’t underestimate the huge hormonal shifts that you’ve been through over the last ten months that are still balancing out. PND is a very real possibility but one that is relatively simple to take steps towards tackling.

Babies are hard and this is a tough time of year to have new one. I was in a similar position to you seven years ago and it was genuinely one of the toughest periods I’ve had to live through. I never sought help but in hindsight really should have because I made a hard situation unbearable for myself.

The good news is things change quickly at this age. He’ll start displaying more personality and interact with you past all the survival drudgery. I think around four months was the turning point for us (by which I mean my dd stopped going wild when I dared to put her in a pram and we could get out and about) in no small part due to a shift in the weather and even small walks being enjoyable.

Mine is now 21 but I still remember the shock of being obliged to lookl after something 24/7 ( and I was an older mother). I felt I was pretending for so long and felt guilt for so many years. Everything is taken away from you in one fell swoop and it is so hard. Hang in there, you get it all back little by little. Get out of the house as much as possible, see other people, don’t waste your time on baby groups( awful competitive nonsense), cut yourself a lot of slack on housekeeping etc. There’s a good time coming.

I found the first eight weeks a really odd mixture - tiring and boring, and I had a real sense of doing things out of duty, not love.

I didn’t bond immediately at all, and I would say instant bond and love is the rarity in my experience, we just don’t talk about it.

once they start to smile and laugh it gets easier.

I just remember being so bored, nobody I knew was off work or had a baby, I even attempted to write a (really short and shit) book out of boredom.

it was overwhelming but also very blah for me for weeks if not months.

it did change though, and got a lot better

Speak to health visitor/midwife/GP - sounds like you just have a typical baby, 2 hour stretches of sleep is normal, as is them waking weird noises at night and being unsettled. I would get help now though as it sounds like you could have post natal depression.
it’s hard but I think you could do with a little help.

Hey OP, please be kind to yourself. You're sleep deprived and your hormones are crashing. Everything will feel difficult right now.

Do you have a postnatal check with your GP coming up? In my area they do them at 6 weeks and we also get a Health Visitor visit around 8 weeks. If you get either of these, just be really honest with them about how you are feeling mentally. They will have dealt with similar before and will offer help and support.

And when you pick your baby up, put his ear against your chest so he can hear your heartbeat. He'll recognise the noise from being inside you, and it might help soothe him.