9 days post partum - post natal depression / newborn resentment

[TeaAndCake30]

Hi everyone.

I had my first baby, a boy, on Christmas Day. He was ten days overdue, and after planning a water birth with just gas and air, I ended up in labour for 22 hours and having an epidural, failed induction and then EMCS.

My baby is now 9 days old. I am struggling unbearably.

I am grieving painfully for my life before. I resent this gorgeous little boy and worry mine and my husband's marriage will never be the same again and we will never have time alone. We used to spend days off going places in the car and now I feel trapped at home. We have been together for 14 years and have such a strong and lovely relationship that I am scared of it changing.

I am severely sleep deprived, surviving on a couple of hours broken sleep each day. Baby is breastfed and cluster feeding. I tried expressing so my husband could feed with a bottle but he still wants the breast afterwards. I tense up when he cries because I know he wants feeding. I hate that I feel like a milk machine and I leak milk and feel horrid.

I feel like I have a black cloud over me and have no appetite at all. I have talked to my husband and he assures me things will get better and our relationship is so strong we will get our time back in the future and can utilise family for babysitting etc. I can't stop dwelling on the past. I miss it just being me, my husband and our cat. I even think I prefer my cat to the newborn.

I am also struggling with the bodily changes. I know it hasn't been long at all and obviously wasn't expecting to "bounce back" straight away but I hate my c section scar, my puffy tummy and stretch marks. I don't have time to make myself look nice anymore so hair is always shoved up in a ponytail and I just wear what's nearby. My husband tells me I'm beautiful but I feel horrid.

I rang maternity triage yesterday and the midwife was really lovely and said at the moment she thinks it is baby blues, to keep an eye on it and have a cup of tea, sleep etc. I have a community midwife visit today which I think will be the last before handing over to health visitor.

Please can someone reassure me that things will get better. I am really struggling to cope.

Thank you.

@twinboymumma I'm getting there slowly, thanks :) having fewer days where I feel like running away and more days where I'm "embracing motherhood". Still feeling quite trapped and have had two supermarket trips and a walk to the woods that have had to be abandoned due to distressed crying newborn, so feel stuck at home and still horrified at my post partum body. But anticipating the hopefully not too distant future when things will settle into some kind of normality.

No one tells you just how shit the early days are and if they do you just think they can't be that bad...

Keep going, your life will settle into a new kind of normal,don't forget you have just had major surgery too which is not to be sniffed at. Do the bare minimum,try and sleep when you can and if you can then just rest. Has your appetite come back at all?

Congrats on your little one

I understand the sleep deprived bit all too well. In the first 2 weeks of my little one being born I slept a total of 15 hours. It was horrendous, but I found doing little routines such as when I got up I brushed my teeth straight away and had a pin of water and made the bed. Seems trivial but if I done these these I felt I had achieved something.

Yours maybe a cup of tea, brush your hair and put clean jammies on, what ever it is I found every few days I could build it up and found I coped with the change in dynamic better than expecting to do everything all at once.

Nothing can prepare you for having a newborn but I would encourage you to go to breast feeding support group which can advise you on all sorts of feeding to give you a break i.e. expressing or formula etc

Hiya, I'm 6 weeks postpartum after a horrific induction that resulted in emcs - and for the first 2-3 weeks I felt very much the same as you do. It's such a massive change, and I think with emcs you're a lot more limited in what you can do than you anticipated or planned for (which doesn't help the feeling of being trapped) and looking after a newborn is hard enough already, without the added pressure of major abdominal surgery you didn't have time to plan for. It honestly does get better though, as you start to heal and start to fall into a bit of a routine (feed, nappy change, nap then you can nap/hope the kettle doesn't wake the baby lol!) It gets easier to cope with the change. Accept as much help as you can, let yourself heal as much as you can and don't place any pressures on yourself - you will find your new normal in a few weeks, and it all does honestly get easier.

Your post is something I could written myself back then. No one prepares you for how hard it is. You think you've made the biggest mistake, that your life is over and will never be the same. Me and my partner used to go on late night drives, food shopping at 1am,takeaways and movies, lying in bed until 11am on a Saturday. Then the baby came and I didn't sleep, and I felt like I had lost everything in my life I loved. I wanted someone to take her away some nights when she screamed from colic and then i would sob because it was a horrible thing to think. But PLEASE please believe me, you do not feel like this forever. My baby is now 17 weeks this Sunday and those early weeks feel like a LIFETIME ago and realistically it wasn't that long ago at all. Sleep deprivation killed me. I was angry, I was sad, I felt numb, I thought I didn't love my baby, no time for myself but when she did sleep I was too tired and had to sleep also so absolutely no free time to myself. But what I can tell you now is, at 17 weeks old I've just got into bed with my partner after watching a film. We made a lovely tea, had a chat about our day and had a cuddle and it was just us as she was asleep. A 9 day old baby compared to a 4 month old old, or even a 2 month old is drastic. It gets better week by week. At the moment you're getting nothing. No sleep, no smiles, nothing to say you're doing a good job. Just something tiny to look after and it's draining. I used to dread each day and then dread the night. In a couple of months time you'll look back and see its better. I absolutely love my baby with my whole heart now. She smiles and laughs and is just beautiful,but the first few weeks my god, some days I didn't want to wake up and accept it was my life. If you feel low, please talk to someone. I told my hv exactly how I felt, I told my partner, I told my mum. I had no shame in admitting in how I felt because its so normal. But keep an eye on it anyway and get help if u need it. Best of luck x

God, having a newborn is so, so, so shit. I really feel for you OP. This is the thread I posted when I had my DD - if you read it through you'll get some great advice from other posters and see how drastically things changed for me. I felt exactly the same way as you, wished I'd never had her, wished awful things, but it got better and I got better and now she's the best thing that ever happened to me and my marriage is stronger than ever. You will get through this, I promise, and you'll be glad you had your baby. I know you feel right now like that will never happen and you're the only person in the world who is doomed to never love her baby but as someone who felt exactly that way, I promise you that you will. I'm even planning on trying for a second, something I never ever thought I would do! Ask for professional help if these feelings don't pass within the next week or so. PND is awful but it's so treatable and you can and will get better.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3217112-to-hate-being-a-mum

Stop trying to be superwoman & the world's best mum, putting pressure on yourself doesn't help. At first a good day is if you have managed to get washed & clean your teeth. As long as your little one is fed, changed & reasonably clean you are doing well, don't forget you have had your life invaded by a little alien who you don't really know even though you have carried it for nine months. If you had a new pet dog you wouldn't be expecting it to sit, stay, eat or sleep to order, there is probably more information about having a new dog than having a new baby. Every new mum wings it at some point, has a cupboard door that they pray doesn't burst open because that is where all the crap that was floating about has been dumped & a mat that all the dust has been swept under to make the place look reasonably tidy. That's before you get to the ironing & all the other stuff. Buy some ready meals or stuff that just needs dumping in the oven & on a plate, don't worry if the house doesn't look like a showhome, it is normal to have packets of nappies in every room & tiny clothes everywhere at this stage, you worry about all that once your little one has learnt the difference between night & day. You feel like your life will never feel normal again, but it will, if you have swapped to formula feeding, let your other half take his turn, get outside for a walk or go to the shops on your own or meet a friend for coffee, you are still you, yes you are a mum, but you are still a person in your own right.

Hi!
Didn’t want to read and run as I was you 5 months ago so big hugs.

Firstly a even bigger hug for breastfeeding this long. No one talks about the hard part of feeling like a cow for the first few months! Just about the amazing bond and start of life you are giving your baby. It’s hard so damn hard especially with a mix of sleep deprivation. I walked the walls with it. My DD has just gone 6month and it HAS got a lot lot easier .. I have done baby led weaning and she has breakfast lunch and tea , few feeds in between before her nap. My DD used to wake every 2 hours like 24 hr no joke. She now does longer and wakes 3-4 times a night between 7-7 but it’s a lot easier as she rolls into me and finds the boob herself. We safely co sleep for the time been. I did try putting her on formula but she wouldn’t have a bottle or a dummy for that matter. With perseverance she probably would have took it but I was so so tired and down giving her a bottle when she was screaming for the boob I gave in. But do what’s best for you a fed baby is best. Happy baby happy mama . I isolated myself a lot during the first few months but I did a walk round the block every day and had bath helped a lot. Ps forget the house work nap when you need to. Take care x