36 weeks and completely underwhelmed

[OverlyUnderwhelmed]

Hi, I've NC for this as I'm quite a prolific poster normally.

I'm 36+ 4 with my PFB. Pregnancy has mostly been a breeze (other than a few mood swings and some back ache, and late pregnancy pains popping up now - very nauseous during first trimester but no actual sickness).

10 year relationship with DP. We made a spur of the moment decision to TTC on holiday and it happened first time. I guess, thinking about it retrospectively I didn't have any time to consider if that's definitely what I wanted and get my head around the idea (and I'm very indecisive - it can take me 2 hours to choose a pizza).

All along this pregnancy, I've just not felt any surge of love or excitement. It's not that I feel sad about it either, but I don't feel much of anything. With each scan, or each time I hear his heartbeat, I'm feel like I should be overjoyed and crying or laughing - But i don't know how to react and I just feel like it's happening to someone else. In fact I think I'd be more excited if it was happening to someone else. I feel guilty and tell everyone how excited I am, but I'm just indifferent to it completely.

I don't know if this is something other people feel. I look at MNs boards and everyone seems genuinely thrilled to be pregnant whereas I just feel so underwhelmed by it all.

I don't think I'm depressed. I feel my normal, happy, passionate self at work. I suppose that's only at work though. When I'm home I mostly feel quite flat.

My relationship with DP isn't brilliant at the moment either, but that's a whole other issue by itself.

I think I just need to know that others have felt like this and then the baby has come along and everything just fits into place. Why am I not excited by this?

I often felt like this during my pregnancy, and I also felt like it whilst planning my wedding- everyone assumes you must be REALLY EXCITED when I just wanted to just get on with things. But my personality is very subdued, I feel like my emotions take time to catch up with what's actually happening IYSWIM? Anyway my LO is here now and yes, it's all fallen into place! I didn't have a big momentous rush of love at the birth and I had quite a few moments of wondering whether we had made a mistake during the week of baby blues, but it's all come together and life is tiring but good!
So don't panic that you're not as excited as other people expect you to be, I'm sure most people aren't as excited as they appear!

I'm like this, my natural pessimism and just my natural demeanor means I am literally baffled by posts where women are bawling crying hearing heartbeats or at scans. I do them all with my practical head on, heartbeat? Well that's good, it's alive. Scan? Has all limbs and all looks well, that's good. This is my second pregnancy and I actually mustered a smile at 12 week scan this time because it was moving around which my son never did during scans.

I hate talking about being pregnant in real life, have to fake excitement (because one time I didn't and a friend's wife made a massive show of me because "how could I not be excited?"), smile, nod along. I'm naturally cautious and after how last time went I'm rightly cautious, so I just don't like talking about it, counting chickens etc.

You're probably still in a bit of shock, we conceived first month both times and I am definitely still in denial/disbelief as I was last time. Eases when they're around 6 months old :)

With my first I was like this. Underwhelmed by it all. I didn't fall in love when she was plonked on my chest either.

It wasn't till she first smiled that I started to feel love for her and it grew from there but it took a long time.

I think more women think like this than you'd expect but it's frowned upon so no one is willing to talk about it.
We also conceived first month of trying.

You'll get there at tour own pace.

Currently pregnant with my second and I smiled at the scan and rub and talk to the bump a bit more. But I'm not that much different really.

I did put paragraphs in that. How annoying.

I was definitely like that. The first time I heard the heartbeat on the doppler at the midwives I listened for a few seconds thinking yep, hearts beating, that's good. And then the midwife just kind of lingered there for ages while I was lying there with my belly exposed presumably so that I can savour the moment of listening to my baby's heartbeat and all I can think is, this is getting a bit awkward now, should I break the silence?

And when my baby was born I would have rather gone to sleep than even look at my baby. I'm besotted with him now though so I wouldn't worry about it.

I was similar. None of this bump-rubbing malarkey / feeling the lurve for what was to me just a sticking out bit of my belly. It didn't really seem real until I came home from hospital with DS1. Like another poster, I didn't even feel it in the minutes after he was born - I just felt more shell shocked that anything else. As the hours, then days and then weeks went by, I grew to love him. With my subsequent DCs it was quicker.
Don't worry : there's no wrong or right way to feel.

Yep, I was similar. Not ecstatic by any stretch of the imagination. Very focussed on work until the very end (went into labour at work!)

BUT DS is now 6 months old, and I am head over heels in love with him. I've extended my maternity leave because I want to be with him for as long as possible, which was unthinkable to me before he was born. I'm also going back part time- which was so not the plan!

I feel the same. I'm nearly 27 weeks and I have bought absolutely nothing - people keep asking me what pram, cot etc I've got.

I also felt the same about wedding planning - all these girly squees around me about how excited I should be. I look back and wish I was more excited but I'm a fairly practical person and I think logically - I don't often get excited about stuff.

I really hope the feelings arrive once baby arrives, there is a really deep dark fear (which I haven't discussed with anyone) that I may get PND. It's completely unfoundered but because I'm so blasé about the whole thing it worries me!

I was similar.

It's like that episode of Sex and the City where Miranda "faked a sonogram" pretending to be all thrilled that she was having a boy when she really wasn't bothered about the whole pregnancy.

I didn't get a rush of love when my PFB was born either. It took time. I took time to fall in love with her. She took time to become her own little self and unfurl from the tiny baby stage.

But my goodness do I love her now. More than I ever thought I could love anyone. She's the love of my life. No contest.

Thank you for all your responses. I've been feeling so guilty that I'm not feeling more and it's a massive relief to know I'm not alone with this. It's a shame this feels like such a taboo subject when it really is normal.

Just do it your own way. I'm glad everyone else thinks so too. You'll be fine.

Look up Whitney Port's I love my baby but I hate my pregnancy videos on YouTube, she was pretty sick in first tri and didn't expect it at all because of how society makes some believe pregnancy is a "magical time". She's pretty funny and honest about the whole thing, nice to see a somewhat high profile person bucking the #blessed trend.

I felt much the same - I remember someone asked me what I was looking forward to and being completely stumped by the question. I adored him as soon as he arrived. Pregnancy 2 I was a bit more excited about but didn't get the 'rush' after the birth and the love has been more of a slow burn.

I think it can all be a bit surreal. My SIL told me she cried when she first hear her baby's heartbeat. I thought it was kinda cool but certainly was nowhere near weeping. The scans also didn't seem real, it's hard to connect the image with something inside you.

What made a difference for me was when I started feeling movement. For me, that helped me connect with what otherwise seemed a bit of an abstract context. I am excited now, but not the way some women I've spoken to are. TBH, I can't wait to get to end of the pregnancy, I'm not enjoying this bit and just want baby here.

Being pregnant and the reality of a baby are two different things. Pregnancy is a tiny part of it. It's how you feel when your baby arrives that matters, and I'll be your feelings will be different when you have an actually baby in your arms compared to an alien in your belly lol

I am the exact same!

25 weeks and conceived very quickly so feel like I've never had the chance to cone round to the idea of being a parent! My husband and I have a great relationship and a fun life and all I can think about is how that's all going to change soon and won't be the same again. People do assure me that things will be different but a good different so I'm hoping all these excitable feelings will come once baby is here.

I'm finding it difficult to picture having a baby inside me even though it is very active! When I do pregnancy yoga the instructor always makes us close our eyes and picture our baby which is something I really struggle to Do!
We havnt found out the sex which I'm not sure is part of why I can't picture a life inside me as I can't picture if it's a he or She!
We are having a 4d gender scan in a couple of weeks which we are hoping will still conceal the sex but will give us a view of baby's face and help me to picture my baby a bit more and bond with my bump.

Fingers crossed!!

Hi OP, I'm 29 weeks and have felt huge uncertainty and fear etc throughout my pregnancy, then lots of guilt that I don't want the baby enough and panic that it means I won't love him. But I've been massively reassured by threads on here which illustrate how loads of people feel that way, even if they were certain they wanted to be mums and their pregnancies were planned. I fully agree that it's a shame all these negative emotional experiences of pregnancy are not discussed openly in the same way that positive ones are! Mumsnet posters have provided me with so much relief - all reactions and emotions towards pregnancy and childbirth and normal and it's very very typical to feel terrified and doubtful. I found this thread in particular very reassuring, I always go back to it when I find myself getting worried again: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/pregnancy/1154020-Deeply-unmaternal-and-terrified

Oh god, I think everyone I know and everyone I've met during my pregnancy have asked if I'm excited. I'm a very middle-of-the-road person when it comes to emotion, I don't get excited very often and its certainly not how I'd describe my feelings whilst pregnant. (I haven't cried at any scans either.)
That's not to say I'm not happy, or not looking forward to meeting my baby - I am - but people seem to think you should spend 9 months being excited!

35 weeks here and feel the same. There is no squeeing at baby clothes (more feelings of OMG how am I going to handle something so small and not break her). There are no feelings of excitement, I'm just apprehensive and petrified that I genuinely do not have a clue what I'm doing! You're definitely not alone xx

32 weeks FTP and can say I feel the exact same. I feel like I've faked so much emotion and excitement to family members. I'm just an extremely emotionally awkward person, terrible with hugs and expressing love etc so I'm worried I'll be the same with my baby. I've got some lovely clothes, moses, cot and all that and it hasn't done anything for me in terms of excitement i keep having mini freak outs about it but reading I'm not the only one and how others have fell in love once the baby is here has been reassuring x

Don't compare your own reality to the clichéd responses of badly-written TV characters, OP. I do not know a single person who had the mythical Rush of Love immediately after their baby was born. I spent my pregnancy doing a weekly international commute, and working on a demanding research project, and didn't give it any serious thought at all, other than it being hard to get into tiny airplane loos towards the end of my pregnancy. I won't lie, the first few months were quite horrifying, and I thought I had made a huge mistake. But he's five now, and a fantastic little person, and the love eventually overwhelmed me, but it took ages.

Don't put any pressure on yourself to feel Hallmark-y crap, and don't panic if you don't feel it at all for a while after the baby is born. Underthink it (which isn't something I say often!) and don't worry. The love stuff resolves itself in time. I find people who've adopted their children very sane company as regards the early months for this reason -- they are handed a baby or child who isn't biologically theirs, who has a past they don't have full access to, and whom they know they won't necessarily bond with for months, and they just get on with things.