Not sure I want one now.... confused...

[Squidstirfry]

Hello

Is this normal? I am 35 weeks pg, expecting a boy, 1st child.

I keep looking around in my house, and my life, and everything is fine and normal, and things are the way I like them. I have my job, my routines, my sleep (I love my sleep)... So then I realize in around 5 weeks time all of this will be "gone" or will be very different, anyway. And I am actually not sue that I am completely looking forward to it...

I know I am supposed to be walking around in a blissful bubble of anticipatory happiness, but I am more rooted to the floor in some sort of mild dread... There is still so much to do for the baby around the house, and things to buy etc that I haven't done. I am a bad mother already.

This child was planned, wanted for over 5 years. My partner is happy, we are both procrastinators though, and so hardly anything has been done yet. I don't feel excited or happy "enough".

Is this some onset or sign for postnatal depression?? I am dreading not bonding or knowing what to do. I don't have a mum. Family are abroad... Friends few and far between. I am lost and anxious, not happy...

I think the way you feel before the birth isn't necessarily any indication of how you will feel afterwards. I know people who were very positive pre-birth who were blindsided by the experience of having a small baby. And people like me who were all trepidation beforehand who have taken to it pretty easily.

I was convinced my negative feelings when I was pregnant would leave me a dead cert for PND, but that's not been the case at all.

I won't lie there were days in the first few weeks when it all felt a bit overwhelming and the tiredness wore me down. But little by little you start to find your feet.

Oh yes I felt just like this too. And do again the second time around ('why ruin something that's already good' etc.).

I think it's quite a healthy reaction really. I was very suspicious of the whole blissful bubble of happiness thing because I just felt that deep down it was peddling a big old lie.

And you know what? It kind of is. Babies are hard. But I was prepared for that, at least. What I wasn't prepared for was to fall completely in love with the baby. Somehow I had just not factored that in.

You will be fine, OP, you sound normal and sensible.

As everyone else says its normal. I just wanted to add that no it doesn't make PND more likely. The only thing I would say that would concern me from your first post is the idea that you should or shouldn't be feeling certain things. That is a mind frame that can put you into pnd (trust me, I know). There are no "right" or "wrong" feelings for these things, only what you do feel.