I Don't love my Daughter!

[LouLou80]

hi, my names Louise, i am 29 and i have a husband who i have been with for over 10 years. i have a 9 year old Son and 3 years ago i had twins, a boy and a girl. I have a situation that i often feel guilty about and i wonder if its normal for this to happen. Basically i love my boys to bits but i do not love my daughter, i never have done. I do care about her and i don't wish any harm towards her but its always been about my boys. When the twins were born I immediately bonded with my second Son but had trouble bonding with my daughter. I totally focused on my newborn son and resented having her around. It got so bad that after 6 months i took her to my mums and left her there. I would see her quite often either when i visited my mum or my mum came to me and i made sure that the boys got to see their sister. i would give my mum money towards her food and clothes and i would make sure everything was ok. I even enjoyed seeing her at times but was always glad to leave her behind afterwards. Earlier this year my mum sat down with me and said that as much as she loved having her live with her she felt that it was time for me to try and bond with her more and suggested that it was time to have her live with me again, i agreed to this so she came to live with me in April. Three months later she went back to live with her nan because it wasn't working at all. Perhaps we didn't give it much time but she missed her nan, her nan missed her, the boys were not used to having a girl around 24/7 and as for me? well i really tried but i just don't love her like i love the boys. So now things are back as they were. She is part of the family and always has been treated as such and i make sure that she sees plenty of her twin brother as its important for them to have a relationship, he sometimes goes and stays over at his nans and they get to spend plenty of time together. So i don't have any concerns there. But its the fact that i don't love my daughter that does sometimes bother me and i do feel bad that i rejected her the way i did and that i took her and left her with my mum. As it happens my mum loves having her and she is a fit and active woman so its not a problem. But why don't i love my daughter like i love my boys? any thoughts/advice? i'm not a bad person am i?

Lou - I am glad you have come back to the thread.

Tavistock is on 020 8938 2241.

Call them today.

Call your GP too, but I would worry you might not get an appt. for a week or so, and you might then decide to cancel or something might crop up.

The Tavi will know what's available in your area.

ofgs, she hasn't given her up. so many unhelpful posts here.

Lou i sincerely do hope that you get some help it is there for you if you really want to address this. I guess your daughter has been away from you for so long you have normalised it.
By the reactions on here you must see how much damage you are going to put all of your children through by not getting the help you need.
I agree about the dh , for a man to give up his child because he is a 'go with the flow' type of person is just astounding!

scottishmummy i'm not trying to defend anything but if you must know i resent babycakes suggestion that i don't deserve my sons. whatever the situation with my daughter the fact is i have always loved them and been a damn good mother to them and i have never prevented them from spending time with their sister either.i expected to be attacked but some of it is going too far, i'm not a monster.

yes i will be logging offline and making some phonecalls.

get busy doing it then, instead of talking about it.

Your poor little girl. You really must seek help about this, what you are doing to her is not right. I pity yyou too, it must be awful to be you, but I pity your daughter too because she is blameless, and she will be damaged by this. PLease do the best you can by her, she deserves to be properly loved.

no lou you are in deep mental crises,take a deep breath and make those calls

this is emotive and will evoke a strong reaction.you need to maybe take note of suggestions and log off.dont get distracted by she said ..i said arguing.this is a no win situation.and it detracts from the important things to do

LouLou, Please please please allow your twins some time together to develop their relationship while you sort things out. If you can't bring your dd back to her family yet, then I look in to sending ds2 to stay with his gran. Their bond should, and still could, be something really special if you let it.

Totally - scottishmummy is right.

Lou, forget about what people have said about you here. They don't know you. You are allowing them to distract you from getting some proper real life help now. This minute.

LouLou80, ignore the rubberneckers. Slowing down to roll down their window and shout a few insults, without giving you any comfort of words of wisdom.

HOpe you're ok. Maybe better to keep this for the counsellor and not to bring it up on Mumsnet. Reading loads of criticism won't help in any way.

hasn't given her up? What exactly do you call dropping a six month old baby at her grandmother's for four years while you play happy families with her twin siblings.

Tbh I think the fact she is a twin makes it much, much worse.

"i expected to be attacked but some of it is going too far, i'm not a monster." that's a matter of opinion though, surely. You have done the unforgiveable in the eyes of many - you have abandoned your child because of her gender, and you seem to be suggesting that the love you feel for her brothers somehow balances that - well it doesn't.

I assume these children start school in September? Do they have different addresses and different names of guardians? Or have you put them into separate schools to ensure the authorities don't become involved?

Oh, FFS, wannabe....Jeezus.

Maggie - This may be the first time Lou has had a wake up call and it may well have been positive.

Her mother just took the daughter, her DH just accepted the situation like the prat he is. Nobyd has addressed the problem, until today by the sounds of it.

Well, poopscoop, as somebody who understands firsthand experiencing an 'imbalance' in the amount of love for her children, I can tell you that posts with no purpose other than to condemn her as a monster won't help at all.

You feel what you feel, but it won't help the op, so if demonising her makes you feel better, go ahead, it won't help the little girl.

And deprssing the OP and making her feel like a monster, for something she already acknowledges needs addressing and fixing, it could slow her down.

To make huge changes, a person needs to feel strong and ready for change, positive, optimistic, good about themself really.

Talking to a counsellor to get to the origins of this lack of love is the only thing that's going to help right now.

"Earlier this year my mum sat down with me and said that as much
as she loved having her live with her she felt that it was time for me to try and bond with her more and suggested that it was time to have her live with
me again, i agreed to this so she came to live with me in April." Actually, it seems the mother did try and force the issue by sitting the op down and suggesting she have daughter back home to live. So this thread isn't the first time the issue has been raised...

I feel very sad reading this post, I hope you can find a way to reconnect with your daughter and bring her home. Having your own mum is very important to any child, she probably misses you a lot Lou. Nan may be lovely but it will never be the same as Mummy.

in future you will hopefully come to see all the wonderful things about your daughter and enjoy her as much as the boys.

Wishing you well and hope you can resolve this situation and find happiness for your family.

Definitely family therapy is needed for the whole lot of them IMO. Hopefully it can be fixed but this is not a problem that is going to go away.

on screen and in print psychiatric issues always read worse.because we are detached from Lou,cant see a nuance,cant determine authenticity,cant get an intutive feel for the situation she describes

i understand the deep emotions this evokes.it has high ouch factor.

but Lou can only sort this out in RL and a MN pasting wont knock any sense into her,or get her to wise up or any other such thing

and i do think there have been some v helpful posts,in particular from those who have experienced emotionally absent mothers

maggie - I have not called her a monster????

I am frustrated at her situation. Nobody close to her seems to be doing much to sort out the mess and 3 years have passed.

Yes, her mother spoke to her earlier this year, but soon enough took the daughter back again. The DH, well he beggars belief. This poor child will grow up feeling confused and rejected. Her mother adores her brothers, but not her? Her father allowed her to be sent away? So she will feel that he too has rejected her?

Of course, I understand that some children are more difficult to bond with, it happens alot. But Lou does need a wake up call from whoever, that she is potentially damaging this child for life.

"I think she knows that i treat her differently to her brothers, kids aren't stupid and i do worry what effect its going to have on her as she gets older knowing that her mum didn't want her"

You HAVE to sort this out NOW! Make custy's post your mantra!

My mum never wanted me, not because I was a girl, but because she didn't want 3 childen. She didn't send me away. But she didn't try very hard either. She actually told me at 15 that she never wanted me. NEVER ever say that, PLEASE! You may have to tell her in year to come, but please be careful.

It has devestated so many areas of my life. I am almost 36. It took the birth & blossoming of my beautiful girl (now 6) to make me realised that I was & could be loved. I have been with dh since I was 16 & know (and always have known) he loves me, but NOTHING started to mend the damage done by my mum until dd.

That's almost 30 years of pain!
And it still hurts!
And we no longer talk.

sm perhaps it's not helpful but equally op does seem to have been affected by the criticisms directed at her on here, and perhaps that is not such a bad thing, considering she has only ever had support for her actions in the past?

Tbh am not sure what op hoped to achieve by posting here? She says she knows that what she feels isn't right, was she looking for people to say "it's ok, you haven't done anything wrong"? or perhaps she is looking for the condemnation so she can actively do something about it.

While her actions are being condoned by those who are colluding in her abandonment of this child she has no reason to believe that what she has done is wrong and unacceptable. iyswim?

'you seem to be suggesting that the love you feel for her brothers somehow balances that - well it doesn't.' erm nope don't think i said that at all. what i actually said was that i resented being told i didn't deserve my sons.

btw everyone 5 minutes ago i made an appointment to see my GP. i will discuss all this fully with him. my appointments on monday afternoon

I haven't read through all the posts so I apologise if I reapeat things that have already been said & I apologise too if I go off on a tangent.

I have, at best, a very strained relationship with my mother. I too lived my Nana for a while & our relationship remains a strong & loving one. My relationship with my mother is far from that. I was an unplanned baby when she was 19, she's been married 3 times & has 6 other children now. I have spent most of my life feeling unwanted & rejected by the person I have wanted to love me most. Even after all this time, all this rejection, all this hurt I still long for my mother to be some kind of mum to me. I would give anything to hear say 'I love you' or 'I'm proud of you'. I know that she will never change, our realtionship will never change yet still I build up my hopes for them to be dashed, that is something that very slowly I am learning to except but also I know our relationship won't survive much longer & very soon I have no doubt it will come to end & for good.

3 years ago I had my DD, she was very much planned & very much wanted yet when she was born I felt I didn't want her. I felt completely overwhelmed by having a DD & wanted to run away as fast as I could. I did everything that I was supposed to for her, bathed her, fed her etc etc but I never really held her, something I'll never be able to change. DH was (is) besotted with DD & they have an amazing relationship & so I was happy to step back & let him be everything to her. (I was also diagnosed with PND when DD was 4 weeks which as you can imagine didn't help matters)

When my DS was born a year ago I felt instant love for him, I bonded with him immediately & felt so, SO different with him. I really felt like a mum. It was then tha realised that if I wasn't careful I was going to end up like my own mother & have an awful relationship with DD & that one day I might loose her.

It took me a long time to pluck up the courage but eventually I took myself along to my GP as I wanted things to change, I didn't want my DD to feel the way about me that I feel about my own mother.

I'm currently going through counselling & CBT to try & change things for the better. I'm trying to hard to break the cycle & I'm learning alot through counselling about why I cat & feel the way I do but slowly it's changing & DD are getting closer & learing more about each other. I'm positive that in time our relationship will be how it should be & I would have broken the cycle.

What I'm trying to say is I can empathise with your situation. I can also empatise with feeling different towards your DSs & your DD. However I'm not sure that having DD living elsewhere is going to help, you need to work through your issues & I think living seperately is going to make that very hard. How does your DH feel about your DD living with his MIL? I know you say that DD misses her Nan but surely she must miss her Dad & brothers & her Mummy too?

Have you spoken with anyone like a GP or HV about how you feel?

I don't think you're a monster, I think you're a Mummy/Woman going through a lot.

nobody close to Lou can resolve this,as it is toxic family dynamics.for whatever reason they are complicit and collude too in this situation

expect no immediate family intervenes as they too are embroiled in this

lou,maybe best not get embroiled in i said...she said

you wont change minds,conserve your energies for seeing gp

ask about family therapy