Is it normal that I'm pregnant and as maternal as an ironing board?

[Scampynoodle]

There. That's it. I'm pregnant and have absolutely no maternal feelings whatsoever. Course, I look after myself, take the right supplements, go to appointments, think about whether the little 'un is doing OK. But when it somes to actually having, living with, a child it's like imagining myself swimming over the surface of Pluto.

In fact other people's children fill me with terror. I just walked through a park of screeching infants and nippers and that was enough to make my blood run cold.

So, as I said right at the top, is it normal to be pregnant and feel as maternal as an ironing board?

Cx

Yup. Even when I was pregnant I would always come up with an excuse not to have a hold/cuddle of colleagues babies when they came into work to 'visit'. Awkward and just not very maternal, despite the fact I really wanted a baby [fickle] . Similar to Naetha - worried about people watching me 'handle' baby and judging that I am not comfortable/capable or embarrassing cooing along lines of " ooooh, you next dear...not long now..."

Perfectly normal I think, as is any other range of emotions or feelings you may have
i was the opposite when pregnant with my dd, always loved kids, always offering to babysit, very maternal.
Out comes dd, nope maternal instincts were evidently all for everybody else's kids. I quite like my dd but I'm not the motherly maternally person I thought I would be, and I can't stand any other kids!
Also normal I like to think.

Yes it's normal. I didn't feel maternal until I had my son. I'm still not that crazed about other peoples kids, though some obviously appeal more than others.

Just to add my twenty pence or so....
I hated being pg. Had morning sickness right up to 40 weeks, fat oozing every where and my feet swelled up like balloons I could hardly walk 5 mins without passing out. And I just could not get into the mother feeling. I'd never really held anyone elses kids, always made an excuse not too. Kids always seemed to hate me and cry. So, 39 weeks into the pregnancy and we'd not bought a thing. Did a massive shop at mothercare for a few of life's essentials, borrowed a pram from a friend. When DS arrived the labour was terrible. We somehow survived the first 3 months and although I thought he was cute, cannot say I had a flood of maternal feelings at all and then at 3 months in I started to think he was kind of cool.. He is now 8 months and I must say I think he is SUPER. Cute cute boy and I love him to bits. Now a bit better with someone elses kids but still fairly crap. Don't worry - you will eventually love your wee one it just might take some time....

I had this conversation with my sister today eldest of 3 !! is 9 on Monday and she stated that if someone had ever said to her that her sister would have three kids and give up work to look after them she would have bet her life on them being wrong

I dont really like other eoples children that much either but I seem to come across as otherwise
I get bored playing childrens games easily and am very disorganised plus find it very hard to get excitrd about makng dressing up clothes for another school fun day

it all seems to come right in the end though you ust do the best you can and hope for the best

my only advice is hold on tight it can be a bumpy very fast ride

all the best for your pregnancy

When I was about 4 or 5 months pregnant with my first, I went to a school friend's house for coffee. She already had a little boy, and she had invited several of our other school friends who also had kids.

There was one other school friend there with no kids.

It was SOOOOO boring! I couldn't wait to leave.

Even now, even after DS2 came along, I do find other people's babies just so boring! My SIL said the same thing, that she finds toddlers so much more exciting. She has three of her own kids and i know exactly what she means....

Even with DS2 I am finding the baby groups / mum and baby get-togethers SO boring.

I can understand this.

Am currently pg with baby no.3 and I have no excitement or anything.
I just cant wait not to be pregnant anymore.

Its true what people have posted here. Everyone feels different things at different times. There is no "normal" IMO.

I remember when DS1 was born I was totally underwhelmed. For weeks I wasn't really sure what he was doing there. To be honest if someone had knocked on the door and said, "Sorry, Wordsmith, we've just realised that you have someone else's baby there - it's not yours after all," I'd have just said, "Oh, OK, of course," and hand him over. But then suddenly one day the sun was streaming through the window, there was just me and DS in the house, and Gabrielle was on the stereo singing "Sunshine on my window". I picked up DS and danced around the room with him in my arms and suddenly everything felt so right. I fell in love with him. He must have been about 2 months old. I still can't listen to that song without tears pricking at my eyes.

Gizmo- some of the women in my nct class DID KNIT BOOTIES. that was in islington, which probably explains it.
anyway, YES YES YES it is normal not to feel "maternal" whatever that means. it took me more than a year to feel like a mother, and although i love my daughter in a mad obsessive way, i still dont feel particularly maternal!
you'll be allright hun..

ps i still hate playgrounds and sandpits are my idea of hell. dd is 18 months and am counting down the days till she outgrows them.

I had never liked babies or young children, but sort of had the feeling that I'd like a kid to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark with and have a laugh with, when they were older, and I sort of wanted a proper family with my husband and to move onto the next stage of life, so we got pregnant.

When I told him 'we' were pregnant, he said, 'Well, I'm very sanguine about it.'

All the way through the pregnancy, every day, I would say, 'I hate babies. I've ruined my body, I've ruined my life, I've ruined our lives, we had the perfect life, we loved living together, we both hate children!'

He agreed.

When she was born, he brought her to me and said, 'I love her. I LOVE her. I LOVE HER!' He has been besotted ever since.

I took my first look at her and felt nothing. I said, 'I don't love her.' I didn't dislike her, but I felt sort of scared and empty.

Then he had to go and take off his scrubs and I was left totally alone with her and she looked at me and I looked at her, and something in me sort of boinged, and I've been absolutely crazily in love with her ever since. I'm ridiculously maternal now and play with her all the time. I look at babies on telly, something I never did, or did only to be annoyed/repelled, and I love them all, I think they're all absolutely utterly beautiful. I want to stop every woman with a baby and tell her her baby is beautiful. I want to stare at mine while she's sleeping all night long.

Now my big 'I'm a dick, actually' thing is saying to my husband, 'But we can't have another. I wouldn't love another one. I would always feel a bit embarrassed about it for not being her, so not being the one I really really loved, and it would grow up screwed up and lonely because I could never love another one like I love her.'

He agrees.

Frankly, we shouldn't be allowed to have another. (But I think we might.)

hmmm even though i was very happy to be pg (despite being sick as a dog) and i do love children, i found that in the run up to having my ds i became rather terrified of children in general and definitely of having my own - as another poster has so well described i just couldn't understand everyone being so coo-ey about fluffy things in mothercare etc etc..
but yes, as soon as my ds was in my arms i just knew i loved him to pieces and that feeling has only grown. He is 9 months now and the dh and i are besotted with the poor child.
oh yeah, and now if i see a newborn i go weak at the knees and all coo-ey, and yes, i love looking at fluffy things in mothercare...

Ah, Macneil, you make me lol . We too were not to phased about having kids. Wasn't really a big thing if we did not get pregnant but thought we'd be old and miserably lonely when all of our friends were out there playing with their sprogs so we thought we'd give it a go.....now, with DS we are thrilled to bits. He is nearly 9 months and so so funny. And yes, don't know if i can bring myself to have DC2 aaaarrggghhhh

God, you've all made me feel heaps better! And, Macneil, you're a corker! Everything that you thought during your pregnancy has also gone through my head. In fact there are days when I wonder what possessed me to go ahead with all of this in the first place.

And praise be! Your personality doesn't have to fly out of the window the moment the baby flies out of your undercarriage! One of my oldest friends has struck the fear of the devil into me. Up until 6 years ago she was a laid-back marathon-running, cycling-holiday, genius chef. Then she got pregnant and overnight chucked in her hobbies, career and friends because she didn't think that she could be a good mother if she didn't spend every waking moment with her kids. Now she's a shell of her former self. If you took the kids away she wouldn't even leave a shadow. It's heartbreaking not least because she looks so lost. We used to chat for hours but now our conversations last minutes because when she's done talking about the kids she has nothing left to say. She didn't even come to our wedding because she couldn't stand to leave the kids for just one hour.

That frightens the living shit out of me so I'm trying to focus on the mates who have kids yet still fit in motorcycling across Europe, climbing, marathon-running and scary-looking careers. It's them and the tales from you lot that keep me going!

Sx

Scampynoodle, do not for one moment change your personality (was going to say lifestyle but hey, who am I kidding, the lifestyle certainly changes!!!!!). You absolutely MUST make sure you make some time for you doing whatever makes you happy otherwise you will go loopy and perhaps turn into your friend..eerrgghh. So whatever that is, travelling, mountain climbing or whatever, you can still do it, just have to be a bit more organised....Personally for me its WORK believe it or not. Feel like I have no identity. I'm DS's mother or DHh's wife. I think work will give me some of ME back in some weird way. DS settling at the childminders this week and work next week so hopefully I should be sane soon.!!! Yet some 'friends' are caning me because "they didn't have kids to have someone else look after them blah blah blah". Oh sod off I say and get a life! Don't loose yours scampynoodle!! Good luck!

"Your personality doesn't [have to] fly out of the window the moment the baby flies out of your undercarriage!"

Unfortunately this is true. I am as lazy, greedy, and waste-time-on-the-internet bad as I always was. The poor infant is constantly slapping my iBook keys because she's seen me do it so much, and I have to grab sandwiches while she's not looking and eat them behind her back because she gets jealous of anyone eating food she's not eating. I meet friends more than I used to because my flat isn't big enough for the both of us, and my friends are just used to me having a little adjunct that drools, now. The one loss, Big Brother; I just haven't had time this year. But it seems it's been a sort of crap year for Big Brother anyway. And I watch all the other telly I always watched.

Warning: I puree a lot. Katie Hopkins would sneer at me.

I was that ironing board in question until I had my dd who is the most beautiful, intelligent and funny child alive (of course) and i miss her dearly even when she's asleep.

All other kids terrify the hell out of me and are quite annoying.

I'm still exactly as mad as I was before and although have lost some friends who don't have kids (not my choice) I treasure the ones I still have and love the time I have with them.

Big Brother really has been pants this year.

Totally normal Scampy Noodle. Great thread this. Glad it's not just me too. I do like other people's children actually, but that's because I don't have the pressure of being ultimately responsible for them.

Wierdly, I loved being pregnant (even though it was difficult in parts) and mourned my bump for quite a while after the birth.

Once dd was born, I didn't feel ... anything ...not a thing. I was happy she had ten fingers and ten toes of course, and I liked bathing and dressing her, but real love didn't follow until about 6 months later. My husband's much more maternal than me to be honest; he's much more physically affectionate for example. I express it in different ways through sorting out practical stuff like healthy meals and clean clothes etc.

One thing though, if dd is in any way in danger (she once ran straight towards an unfenced pond) then ''buried'' maternal feelings do suddenly rise to the fore.....!!!

when I read purples post I thought- oh my god one of my friends is on mumsnet and is describing me.
I was so so adamant I wasn't having kids, I was almost phobic. I was the least maternal person on the planet. When I was pregnant (longish story) I remember thinking, 'god can I admit to anyone that I'm just not that bothered by this whole thing' and worrying for the poor baby at having such a crap start.
Lets just say I am now completely smitten. My son is of course perfect and wonderful and I love him to bits. I wondered around the maternity ward snifing the top of his head clutching him to me grinning like a loon and feeling sorry for all the other mothers becasue they clearly all had third rate children as mine was so perfect (I know I know). So what can I say....... its soo normal and don't worry about it.