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?

good to hear about the appointment.

Great you have got an appt pretty soon, Lou.

This is a heartbreaking post which has brought tears to my eyes. As am mum of 6 year old boy/girl twins I cannot imagine feeling this way.

My DS was born first and I instantly bonded with him and felt the rush of love. My DD was born a few minutes later and was handed to my husband. I always felt that this was the reason why I didn't feel that same bond.

It was a few weeks before I did. My DH was totally shocked and upset when I told him I had finally bonded with our DD six weeks later, he had assumed it had happened within a day or so. I feel so ashamed that I felt that way now and I have never told anyone other than my DH about my feelings.

Luckily for me and my family that is history now. I wish you well Lou - good luck with your appointment.

Great news about the appointment...don't leave anything out, tell them exactly how it is ~ good luck.

fantastic that you have an appointment, bloody fantastic.

I am so ! Your poor little girl,waht will your boys make of this when they get older? The sentance that got to me the the most was you saying that it SOMETIMES bothers you that you don't love her! I think that boding with a baby and indeed all forms of family love are as much about action as emotion.if you routinely act in a loving way towards someone then the emotional side will catch up but by abandoning her and separating her from her twin you haven't given her a chance.I can see that having twins may make it hard to bond with one-many parents of two find no.one suddenly less favoured when you have a new baby to look after,but I think your common sense and responsiblity should have and should still win out .think of twenty years down the line and whether your tiny dd will ever feel loved or lovable.Get her home and get help.

sorry for all the typos, I am half dead with sleep deprivation.

Lou, I have come to this late but have read the entire thread. Well done for making the appointment. I hope your GP refers you urgently and you get the support you need.
It is sad that your DH and Mum have taken the easy way out by letting you do what you want. I hope you can encourage them to be tougher and support you in learning to love your DD.
As several others have said, I do think you need to consider the effect your actions may have on your DSs. Also, when they become teenagers, how will you react to their girlfriends?
Could both your Mum and DD move in with you for a while? This would mean your DD will not miss her Nan while she gets used to a new environment.
You have taken a hard first step to putting things right. I hope for the sakes of all your family that you can see this through and do what you know to be right.

My dad had an experience as a child that is a little like this. His mother had died whilst he was a toddler and one day he heard his father making arrangements to have him put in an RAF orphanage, just him, not his older brother. In the end that did not happen and he instead went to live with his grandmother. Just him, not his older brother. My dad is in his 70's now, very stiff upper lip, certainly not the emotional type at all. Yet he has sat in front of me and cried about this.

I really hope you can take the advice given as to where to go to get help and you and your family can work through this.

Claire

Lou, I think you have been very brave coming on here and posting so frankly. Yes what you did was wrong but it is likely due to an underlying phsycological issue which I am happy to see you are taking steps to rectify.

I probably would have found this very odd and shocking had I not watched the documentary some PPs have mentioned which has given me some understanding of this problem. I wonder about the relationship you have with your mother. You clearly have some sort of relationship, but from some of your offhand comments I wonder if this is where your issues with your daughter come from. You are one of 4 kids, the only girl; the girl you say your mother longed for and wished there were more of. Did you feel growing up that you received special treatment from being the only girl? Maybe felt smothered by your mother in a way that the boys weren't? Perhaps you struggled to forge your own identity because your mother 'girlyfied' you because you were her only girl and she wanted all the pink and frills that sterotypically are associated with little girls?
Is this perhaps why you desperately didnt want a girl...a fear of repeating the same thing?

Whatever the reason you do need someone who really knows their stuff to go over these issues with you. You probably dont even know you have them if they're deeply buried, but you have serious issues and sadly you and your daughter are both suffering.

You need the support of your mother and your husband to sort this out, but they must support you 100%. Your mum cant say she supports you then when you have a few wobbles say "never mind, you tried, I'll take her back". You all need to be in this together as one big family, otherwise you wont be a family anymore.

Good luck and keep us posted--I really hope things get better for ALL of you.

It's very brave that you came on here to post Lou. Most of us can't ever imagine feeling the way you do about our own child.

You know your family arrangement is unacceptable and can't continue along these lines and you're smart enough to have done something about it - well done.

I hope you have a good and understanding GP and it's the first step towards your family being together. Good luck.

You need to watch that channel 4 documentary - she loves one twin but not the other, she learns to love both. She had a form of PND. I suspect you have the same, and like any mental illness you need help.

please watch this

FWIW, where I work I come into contact with social services (childcare legal cases). Often a child's situation will be decided by assessing whether the family problems can be fixed within a timescale that's acceptable to the child.

EG. a mother on drugs is assessed as needing a year of treatment and therapy to clean up. A baby might be given back to her eventually as she can be given help in the meantime and the baby will not remember. An older child might be better off placed elsewhere as another year of a bad situation may make their trauma that much worse.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, do you want to fix this? If you don't really want your daughter back home it may be better for her if she stays with her Nan. I think the damage is probably already done to a certain extent and either way she is going to feel rejection. Which option is going to be less damaging in the long run? Staying with her Nan, knowing you don't want her but at least being brought up by someone who does? Or back in your family unit, where she belongs, but forever second best?

Sorry, didn't see that you have an appointment - good for you and I hope it goes well.

I think this is what I have the real issue with, and I have no experience with this so may be talking out of my backside... It seems worse to me that she is growing up, looking in on the family she is part of, but from the outside. DH's first comment when I talked to him about this was, would it be right for your daughter to be brought back into your family when you don't really want her there? And I sort of agree with him. I almost think that she would have been better off adopted from the start, completely away from this situation. Either way now, it's very hard on her because althought you might think she wont remember it, she'll know. A friend of mine, much older than me, was sent to live with aunts when she was a child. She always felt that her parents hated her and that was why they sent her away. Turns out her father wasn't her father at all and he did resent her. She was 61 when this all came to light. I know your situation is different but she will know about this.

Oh and maggievirgo, what would you call it then?

I'm glad you've taken the first step and I hope you get the help you need, both you and your daughter. You're not a bad person but you do need help. Good luck.

LouLou, I am really glad to read that you have made an appointment with your GP and are seeking proffessional help, it's a big and important step.

I really do feel very sorry for your dd, because she must feel so very rejected.

I can , however, kind of understand your feelings....although, slightly different, I rejected ds 3 for a good while after he was born, not for being a boy, but I was quite traumatised by his Birth and suffered some depression after his Birth, but giving him away would have never been an option, and I feel that, in effect, your dh and mum have enabled you to go down the line of abondening your child. Both should have stood up against this and make you sort it out before now, tbh. It is possible to overcome these feelings, luckily for me it all worked itself out with my ys and myself, and he is a right mummy's boy now and very muhc loved by me, aswell as the rest of the family.

Anyway, I am hoping that you will be able to overcome your feelings and that it is not to late and that you will be able to make it up to your dd!

LouLou, well done for making the appointment. It can't be an easy subject to raise with the gp.

I know the situation is less than Ideal, but take a deep breath and remember that your little girl is with her grandma who really does love her.

I think that is the best place for her UNTIL you can work out why you feel the way you do. There would be no point to taking her back to your home and risking more severe damage to her confidence before you have figured out how to love her mroe successfully.

Good luck. I hope the GP is kind, supportive and puts you in touch with the right people.

Very sad situation, maybe you only felt comfortable dealing with boys. But you do need to try and bond with her as this will get worse when she becomes a teenager and will feel that she will need to blame you for everything...like teenagers do

What custy said. I struggled with my DD especially when my DS was 3yrs later. I still feel guilt about this period when DD wasn't loved as she deserved by her mother. But I got over it and I made sure she was shown plenty of love and care - even if i had to fake the love. And now I am so proud of her. So proud.

Make an effort. Persevere and don't let your mother take over.

Well done for making an appointment for Monday, that's the first positive step. You are making progress already.

I hope in time you resolve the problems you have bonding with your daughter. Little girls are just the best thing ever. I have two boys too who I adore, but also adore my DD.

Keep telling yourself you can do this.

There is little point saying anything like 'think how lucky you are to have a healthy baby girl' or 'imagine how you would feel if your mother rejected you' because clearly that won't help.

You were very brave and candid to make your initial post and I hope you feel in someway relieved for having verbalised it.

However, I do think you should recognise you need some kind of help with this. It will haunt you one day and you need some help now.

A therapist will help you explore this, and hopefully find a way through it. Is there something in your life, your past, your childhood that makes you resent girls. Is there something in your upbringing that makes you feel girls are less loveable or unworthy. Is there something deep rooted that makes you envious or resentful of loving a baby girl and not a boy.

Don't answer these questions here, but go and find the answers. You are clearly a terrific mum, and someone who is capable of love, but you do need some advice and there will be someone out there who can help you.

You have been brave in admitting your feelings, but you need to be brave and go and do something about it. We only get one life.

I agree with tooth fairy. It is such a taboo (as the posts on this thread reinforce) that it is brave to hold your hand up to this.

No experience with this, but want to say the op is clearly very mixed up and seems to be slightly detached, i think posting here was obviously her first step in confronting the situation and to actually say those words out loud and is really a positive step to acnowledging its not right or normal.

i wonder if a lot of this is deep rooted in her relationship with her mother, comments about the nan missing the dd and also about desperatly wanting another daughter, there seems to be an undercurrent of wanting to please your mum.

I really hope you get the help you need and do seem to want, the detachment of post all seem very indicative of PND.