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?

she ahd a termination just before I was conceived, not born

Good for you asking for help now, I hope you get help for your ishoos.

I suspect your gp will inform ss about this anyway as a lot of individual and family counsilling (sp) will be needed.

And your dd is going need a lot of help with what and why you did what you did. But more so why didn't her dad stand up for her and let this happen.

I hope it not to late for dd although she only a baby still.

I have 2 freinds who where abandon by their mothers (1 bought up by grandparents and 1 by father) one from a baby and one when she was 3, both have been in very abusive relationships trying to find 'love' but not knowing what that means . One is now married (to very nice man) with her own child but she is very high maintenance as a freind and needs constant reasurance. The other is in a womens refuge having finally leaving her 2nd abusive husband.

OP has absolutely no idea what she is storing up for the future with this situation. It makes me feel very, very angry but I realise like others have said that I do not personally know the OP so it would be unfair of me to really relay my thoughts on this from my own personal experience.

OP, I am glad you are getting help. Yes, it is brave that you came on here and have spoken about this, please follow it through. No excuses, this is your chance to fix this, just do it.

Perhaps one thing to think about is your future relationships with your sons that you adore....if that is so important to you, then do yourself the favour and sort this out once and for all, at the very, very least - think about them resenting you in future for rejecting their sister - maybe you don't love her, but they will.

Custardo - fab post.

I have scanned through this whole thread and nowhere can I see what has happened to this child's dad.

Have I missed something? The OP wanted boys so when she had a daughter she rejected her?

What about the child's father?

Did he just say, "Yep, fair enough love, you're right. Let my daughter go and live with the mother in law?"

"i don't wish for social services to get involved, they can do more harm than good with their interfering, overbearing ways."

Have you had a bad experience in the past, OP?

Social Workers are most often desperate to keep families together - taking kids into care costs too much.

pretty much, merrylegs. the whole family sounds really screwed-up. i'm with greeny, i think the mother is really sus here.

eh? is this for real?

if so, I think yes SS needs to be involved. What on earth can they do that is worse than sending one of your kids away?

but seriously...really?

There is "struggling to bond", which can of course be a symptom of pnd, etc.

This is not struggling to bond. This is much much more serious. This child has been sent away, fgs (possibly)

I was told a ,true, story the other week. A perfectly well functioning, 'normal' family were under SS for problems with their daughter. The 'problem' was they didn't like her. She was a wellbehaved, polite, well liked by everyone (but parents) child. They family walked out leaving her, sobbing, with the SW because they "loved their son, she's gets in the way, we don't want her". The girl was 10 and they just abandoned her. Don't let be you in 7 years time.

This happens much more than people realise. I know of two people who were rejected by their parents and sent away and the outcome for them has been, well let's say tragic is an understatement.

I think things have been left far too late to be honest. Reading OP posts she has no insight as to why she feels like this and it is apparent that she is a long, long way and many years of therapy from opening her heart and home to this little girl.

I don't think the Mother is the villain personally, quite the reverse, what on earth would have happened to the poor girl without a loving Grandmother who is actually trying to get the OP to open her eyes. The Father seems like the classic bystander but there is so much we don't know. I hope it works out but the odds are so very slim.

OK, have just seen the post where OP's Dh 'went with the flow.'

WTF?

This sorry situation needs some serious overbearing interference PDQ.

Reading this made me so . Hope the OP gets help and tries to turn things around asap.
But I am also a bit shocked and suspicious about the dad non-involvment in this (which I really do not get - he must not love the daughter that much either and so needs help/he is guilty too).

I will watch that documentary as well.

Good to see that you have made an appointment to see the GP on Monday. Good luck with that. You need to be completely open and honest with the GP in order to get the appropriate referral.

When I was pg I wanted a girl as I thought for practical reasons it would be easier (wasn't sure that dp would be keen on fatherhood and I figured raising a girl as a single mum would be easier). When I found out I was expecting a boy I had what can best be described as two weeks of mourning. I really didn't know how I would handle raising a boy if his father was possibly struggling with being a father.

Ds was born early and poorly and very nearly died. Dp saw him once, couldn't deal with it and became ex-p. Ds is 5 now and is a real boy despite having no male role model in his life. Despite thinking that I could only raise a girl I can't imagine life now if ds had been a dd.

I am sorry for you that your childhood relationships no doubt led you to your abandonment of your dd. I am even more sorry that your dh has been unsupportive. Whilst you don't write that it is spoken in everything you post. I can't imagine a man that loves his dcs sitting back and accepting the fact that one doesn't live with them and doing nothing to help that to be changed.

I hope that you get the help you need to integrate your dd back into your family or if not then to put her up for adoption to a family that will love her as unconditionally as she deserves.

I was rejected and abandoned by my mother. She didn't want me and clearly favoured my 2 younger siblings. It has caused huge problems for me, including problems in my relationship with my own daughter.

But, it is possible to overcome these problems and break the patterns from your own childhood. It's a long hard journey, but well worth it and the only option if you don't want your daughter to grow up feeling rejected and abandoned and in turn reject and abandon her own daughter.

Lou you have a daughter end of story, she is YOUR child YOU brought her into this world, its up to YOU to make it right. She did not ask to be born, you owe it to her. You need to be trying much much harder than what you are doing now. You need threrapy to address past issues that could be responsible for you thinking in this way. The way that you and your DH and mum are going are messing up her life and that of her relationship between her and her brothers.

I sometimes wish that I i was free and able to do things i did before my dd came along, she had colic and would cry from 9 in the moring to 9 at night, and i just wanted to get away from her. My dh was at work most of the time and not very helpful I just did not feel very maternal at all, but I had to try hard for her sake and always loved her but found it difficult to show. Now its different, she is 2.5 and fantastic and bonding well.

Really in conjunction with counselling I think that you should also be having psychological/psychiatric help to try and change your behaviour towards your daughter. Your husband and mother should stop enabling your behavioiur, if you cant overcome this you might consider adoption like the other posters have suggested so that your daughter has a chance of a loving and caring parents.

Sorry also I cannot understand why your husband is not sticking up for your daughter his flesh and blood too, my dh would never allow me to send my daughter away, he would probably send me away instead.

I think you are doing the justification dance and cusardo called you on it. Just because it is hard, doesn't mean you don't do it. You are behaving in a way that is immature and selfish. I am not trying to call you names but your behavoir is that of a child. How will you ever explain to this poor girl when she is grown what you did. How will you explain it to your sons that they have a sister, but didn't get to grow up with her in the same house. You are sending the message to all your children that your love is conditional. Life is hard, so what, you are blessed to have 3 children. Go onto the TTC or miscarriage posts and you can hear the pain of those woman who want a child. All I can say is SMARTEN UP!, as my mom would say when I behaved badly.

Again, please read Custards post over and over!

I can't even begin to understand what you are doing. Your poor daughter.

Lou for me so much of your post[s] seem to be about you and how you feel rather than about a 3 year old toddler growing up knowing that the person who should be the centre of her world has rejected her.Honestly in many ways it would have been better to have your daughter[I wont say dd as she obviously isnt to you]adopted as a baby where she could grow up loved and wanted by a family.It is too late now and I fear that one day you will regret this.Your sons will grow up and marry and you will lose out on one of the most precious realationships a woman can have.Your feeling for your sons must be flawed too by your rejection of their sister.How will you be with their wives,their daughters.You need help and for all of your children's sakes I hope it is not too late.
Good Luck to all of you.

Yes custards post summed it up so nicely, I would read it and take note if i were you. IMO I really dont know how you could not love your flesh and blood regardless of it being a boy or girl, its not how do i put it without looking bad, normal really and that is why you need to get help immediately!!! You are not just wrecking your daughters lives but that of your boys and the relationsip that they have with their sister, you have 3 children Lou, not 2, so please stop thinking about you and your issues and think about them and how you can make it right.

I am usually loathe to doubt an OP, but I really hope this sorry story isn't some kind of device to invite others to share similar experiences for some kind of journalistic gain.

There is so much about the OP that is sus, not least the reaction of the DH. If he was estranged from the family, he may feel powerless in the situation.

But the OP says they live together, so unless he is not quite the ticket, his reaction just doesn't sit right.

There has to be some deep trauma or psychological issue for the OP to not have bonded with her DD, but her DH would not have shared these experiences.

Also, if this is true, the OP needs to decide who has parental responsibility for the child.

This can be done with a private court order and does not have to involve social services. But without it, the granny will not be able to sanction medical treatment, or schooling or take the child abroad. If the child is to be brought up by granny, they need to sort this out.

Yet the OP says she doesn't have any concerns with the care arrangement.

She needs to stop detaching from her responsibilities and start attaching.

(And if she is from the Daily Mail, as her 'overbearing and interfering social worker' statement suggests, she can quote me on that.)

I am not sure either Merrylegs, i would not reveal that kind of thing on a parenting forum, I would be ashamed. There are things that i am ashamed of as a parent that i would not reveal in deatil here, like smacking my dd when she is naughty instead of using other more appropriate methods.

and the extent of my pnd with my daughter which is so much better now.

I did seek help form the GP who was so much better than i thoughts and thats what lou has to do now!

Oh yes Merrylegs unfortuately i have that opinion on SW but i do read the Daily Mail (iam not a reporter just an ordinary mum lol). However i did work with adults who have disabilities and did come across some fantastic SW and some really crap ones too.