Motherhood Ambivalence

[ElenorRigby]

Ive never been a maternal sort, never played mummy with dollies, never knew anything about kids, never wanted any. My only experience of children came through getting to know and love my bf's DD.
Sooo it came as more than a great shock when I found myself pregnant around christmas time.
It was a huge shock for my bf too, we went through one hell of a time wrestling with what we should do and seriously considered termination.
Im now nearly 30 weeks pregnant and still have no maternal feelings whatsoever.
My bf and I are making all the arrangements for the nippers imminent arrival. My bf bought me pregnancy and newborn books which I have studied carefully. In short I am practically ready I have the knowledge and equipment but still feel strangely ambivalent or disconnected from the fact that me of all people is going to be giving birth very soon.
Its not that I am not a caring or irresponsible person. My bf has a beautiful 4yo daughter I love and care about very much. I have also always considered having child the most important and responsible task anyone can take on. Its just I guess that I cant imagine myself in that role even now.

I have talked to a couple of friends who felt similarly ambivalent during their pregnancys...both went on to be really good mums.

I am wondering if their are other MNers who have felt this way...

Thanks Ele

Very common i think.

It's a bit like other jobs - lots of people don't have a burning vocation for their job, but many still enjoy it, get absorbed in it etc.

have to say that i probably feel less and less maternal as ds gets older - it is more and more like having a friend who lives with me (not quite the same obv but i know what i mean...)

I was broody earlier in life but once ds was born i just felt 'time to get on with it' rather than any rush of emotion. I can't say I'm a 'good mother' but I'm the best one for ds, I do know that.

Yes over here hello!!!!
Never wanted kids till I met dh and then mad hormones swooped in and now I am a mum.
Hated it at first but now its great fun!
I think you'll make a marvellous mum because you just will! xxxxxx

Hi elenor, I am 37 weeks, and though this baby was planned almost as soon as I got pg I went into some kind of shock, and felt ambivalent at best, and miserable at my worst. All I could think about were the changes to my life, financially, career wise, lack of freedom. I have been in near constant physical discomfort too for the whole time. I was worrying coz I didn't feel like I was bonding with my unborn baby.

But now things have changed. Not sure how or why, though I had 2 weeks signed sick off work as I was just so knackered and crying all the time and generally was a bit of a wreck. Don't know if it was the time off, or just the sheer inevitability of it all but now I am actually excited, though still feeling a bit worried about how I am going to cope with having to put someone else first ALL the time. Plus, whenever I am around other people's kids I just get freaked out as I feel bored, disgusted, very little maternally for them. But by all accounts it's different with your own.

This probably isn't a lot of help as I don't know what the answer is, or if I am going to be a good mum after the way I've been feeling. All I can say is that if you are worried enough to post about it, then I think you'll be fine, you just have to accept that it is a shock, and it is life-changing. Good luck and remember there will always be people on here who can empathise.

Hiya
This will probably sound very condescending and honestly I'm not intending to to be but until you hold your own baby in your arms you just cannot imaging how scary and wonderful motherhood is. When my ds was born (very much wanted and planned for after loads of mcs) I went into a kind of shock and everything was totally unreal for weeks. I just didn't feel like his mum, just someone who was looking after him for a bit. he's nearly 3 now and I love him and our life together more than I could possibly imagine. Everyone reacts in different ways and there's a world of difference between a bump and a baby, I still miss my bump to this day even though i'm pregnant with number 2. Don't worry about feeling ambivalent, its hard to get excited about something you haven't seen, heard or cuddled, not really. it will all slot into place once your lo is in you arms

Good luck and enjoy

I felt exactly the same before I had my DD. Not broody or anything, just felt it was time to get on with it and DP wasn't going to wait around for ever. Even in the throws of full labour, I remember shouting (in between sucks on gas and air) " I can't believe that after all this I've got to fecking babysit! I have always hated babysitting" Needless to say, I was completely smitted the second she was born. And although there have been ups and downs, and a steep learning curve (as with any new job) I do love being with my DD and am 33 weeks pg with my next. Good luck with everything, I am sure you will be fine

All through my pregnancy I couldn't visualise having an actual baby. I would lie awake at night trying to connect the kicks I could feel with a baby but it just wouldn't happen. It's not that I didn't care about my pregnancy or that I felt ambivilent about it, just that it didn't feel real. I was the same about the birth - I couldn't get too worried about it because it just seemed an abstract thing in my future even though I'd look at myself in the mirror and say "I'm going to go through childbirth, I'm going to have a baby" it would still just seem too alien to really process...

Anyway, forget all that. Once ds was here it was and is amazing. Lots of shitty bits but ultimately amazing and I still spend ages gazing at him with that same sense of wonder that "I have a baby" but it feels great!

I still can't connect the baby that was inside me for 9 months to ds strangely. Maybe I didn't have the bonding that some people talk about, maybe it's because I only had one scan at 12 weeks, didn't know the sex, but who cares now?

I felt very much as you do when I was pregnant, ER. My pregnancy was unplanned and I spent most of it obsessing about the increasingly imminent labour and birth rather than on what would happen afterwards: I didn't have any maternal feelings either beyond a sort of protectiveness towards my unborn baby. I did try to imagine what it would be like to be a mum but I had nothing to compare it to; I couldn't quite believe it was going to happen so there was a sense of unreality to it all.

My advice would be not to berate yourself for how you're feeling. Your baby's arrival will knock you completely for six, there's no way of emotionally preparing yourself for it so don't try - just concentrate on the practicals, like you are doing. Although your baby is demonstrably real, kicking and wriggling inside you, you haven't met him/her yet, you have a lot of getting to know each other to do, so it's no wonder you don't have any maternal feelings just now.

You might find the first couple of weeks after the birth very difficult - I did, and posted a thread in Parenting to that effect, and got brilliant advice. I can find you a link if you'd like to read it. It was only then that the reality of motherhood really sunk in for me, and I found it a rather strange and anxious time. I don't know if I immediately bonded with my daughter at birth (lots of women don't) - I thought she was beautiful, and I was a little bit in awe of her, but I didn't feel like her mother. Later, when we brought her home, I felt totally overwhelmed by the responsibility of looking after her and terrified I'd cock it up. The feed/sleep/feed/sleep routine of every day felt a bit oppressive at first, and I remember the first evening she really bawled I bawled too, along with her!

Gradually I felt more settled though, and now my daughter is 6 weeks old (lol - check me, voice of experience) I can honestly say I feel much happier. It helps enormously that in the last couple of weeks she has become much more alert, and has started to smile, gurgle, coo, and generally make it known that there is a lively, burgeoning intelligence and personality behind those gorgeous blue-grey eyes. Since she was born, I can't count the number of times people have instructed me to make the most of these early weeks, and how special they are - it's only now that I understand what they mean.

"I still can't connect the baby that was inside me for 9 months to ds strangely. "

forgot to say - snap! My husband said something very similar the other day. Except my husband said "I can't believe B is the same baby I saw shoot out of your vadge" which, if not couched in the most poetic of terms, chimes pretty well with what I feel.

A friend of mine who was never maternal got pregnant accidentally and spent the whole nine months miserable about the pregnancy and really feeling that she couldn't cope with a baby. I was very worried about how she would react when the baby was born but it was amazing. She was over the moon and described the feeling as that of waking up on Christmas morning and finding out she had received the best present she could ever imagine. She is a wonderful mother and now seven years on is delighted to be pregnant with her second child. Sometimes these things just fall into place as if by magic.

LOL at your husband's turn of phrase Lazyemma!

I was madly ambivalent; to be honest, some of that ambivalence is with me still - it certainly did not vanish with the first sight of my first baby seven years ago.

But I absolutely adore both that child and the second one I had two years later. They have enhanced my life immeasurably - they light me up, they drive me wild, they give my life meaning, they push me to my limits. Motherhood, for me, has been worth it.

...and I'm a crap mum but they're gorgeous.

I've always wanted kids (well, since I was 21, anyway) but some of the things people say to me about how I'm supposed to be feeling don't mesh at all with how I do feel, or how I visualize it. The big one that bugs me is, "You're going to be A Mother," as if that will define my entire personality, like I'm just going to slip into this archetype and cease to be myself. I know, intellectually, that it's going to be a big change, but I'll still be me, won't I?

Don't know if that has anything to do with what you're feeling, Ele, but that's what your post brought up for me.

The thing that worried me the most throughout this pg was that whenever I talked about how hard it was people would say "yes, but you are going to have a baby at the end of all this" and all I could think was "you know, I don't see that as a plus point right now!"

And now I just worry that at some point I am going to be punished for those sort of thoughts

If the ambivalence doesn't get you the guilt will

havent read whole thread but want to add - don't worry if you still don't feel particularly chuffed with your DC once he/she is in your arms, in my opinion they dont really become fun till around 6-8 months old...

You sound totally normal to me, check out my other thread on exactly this subject!