Babies and unsupportive families

[MamaLazarou]

Apologies in advance for long, self-pitying whinge!

We have a wonderful son aged nearly 7 months. My husband doesn't have any family, and mine are completely useless. The few things my mum has done for us (making us lunch when our son was 1 week old, giving us a lift home from the hospital), she has done very begrudgingly and complained about. We have had to cope alone from day 1 and I am so jealous of my friends whose families rally round to help them out when they have their babies.

I am proud of how far we have come on our own, but it's tough, and I can't help feeling cheated and rather bitter about it all. I'm starting to find it difficult to be happy for people who have close, loving families who look after them.

Is anyone else coping alone? How do you come to terms with the resentment? When does it all start getting easier?

I am actually wondering, when you said you think you may have had PND, if perhaps you still are dealing with it. You seem very unhappy and (for lack of a better way to put it) a bit off-balance, rather like you are going back and forth between feeling miserable and feeling angry (with yourself and others). It might be something you might want to think about.... this is stuff that happened over 6 months ago and you still seem quite bitter, when you should be focusing on your sweet little one and the joy he is bringing into your life (yes, okay, and possibly still some sleepless nights!) - not dragging out stuff from 6 months ago to get annoyed at.

Thank you to everyone who has posted on this thread. I have now realised that I may well have PND and have made an appointment to see my GP.

I really appreciate all your forthright advice, and you are right, Triggles: it's not not right that I should still be twisted up in knots about it all months later. Time to sort it out. Thanks again.

Mama, I love my mum to bits, she's a great grandma, but not practical with babies and when dd1 nearly died at birth she looked after me in hospital but then high-tailed it as soon as dd1 came home. Same when dd2 was taken ill when ds was born. I felt bitter at the time, but now I can see that she was doing what she could. She's not cut out to be the practical hands-on person around babies, her strengths lie elsewhere.

We have friends whose parents drop everything in order to give them a break and who are very hands-on. I wouldn't swap places with them though.

The way to let the resentment go is just to look at the reality of it. Your mum shouldn't help more, because she isn't. It's impossible to frame your happiness around somebody else doing something to make you happy; life doesn't work like that, because very often people do the exact opposite. Become responsible for your own happiness. You are stronger than you know. And I had PND after dd1 and PTSD after ds was born and I promise you that you will be strong. You may not realise it at the time but looking back I am amazed at how strong I was.

As for breastfeeding, I've been there. I couldbt bfeed dd1 and felt very unsupported and had lots of 'if only's' going through my mind. I also felt crushingly guilty. Then I realized that there's a hypothetical baby for whom bf is the best, and then there's my real baby, for whom bf definitely wasn't.

I hope that everything goes well with the GP (going to see him/her is a positive move towards taking back your power, too) and that you feel better soon. xxx

MamaLazarou, four things sprang to mind as I read this thread:

1. Remember that while PND doesn't have to have a reason behind it, it is often the case that it does. Things like an unsupportive mum, difficulties with breastfeeding, illness etc can all make PND worse.
2. You may want to say something to your mum. Some of the stuff she's done / failed to do sounds pretty crap, especially how she built up your expectations and then let you down ("I'll be round all week" vs actually coming round only twice). Maybe you should be talking about the effect her actions have had on you and asking her to do something differently in the future.
3. Re BF'ing. When you compare how women learn how to BF in this country vs countries where BF rates are close to 100% (eg developing world), it's really no surprise! Women elsewhere tend to have seen it happen from when they were kids and have a big network of support around them, both to give advice at the moment it's needed (eg latching problems at 3am) and to help care for the infant. If you'd seen the BF counsellor, it would have made it more likely you could have fed successfully, but it wouldn't have made all the difference.
4. I think there's a fine line between letting go of the past/not focusing overly on the negative and getting shat on, frankly. I'm all for being positive about the future, but I'm all against giving people a licence to behave badly towards you in the future. Hence why I suggest you may need to talk to your mum see 2. The only proviso is, I'm sure there's a lot of nuance and backstory you've not captured in a few lines on MN you need to get all of that clear in your head and be precise in what you're bothered by and what is reasonable.

Shilly, isn't it about being clear-eyed? I know now what my mum will and won't do. I put no conditions on my love for her. Yes, the OP could ask her mum to do things differently in future, but what if her mum says she ill and then doesn't? Then the OP is setting herself up to feel gutted and reliant on her mum to make her happy again.

It doesn't matter to me how badly people around me behave towards me now, it only matters what I think about it. Their actions can only hurt me if I let them. Otherwise I'm giving them all the power to give or take away my happiness, and I refuse to do that.

Im someone else without support, had/s ? PND, have bust up with sons father ( at least in part, due to PND )
i feel the resentment you talk about, but not so much since i have been prescribed anti depressants.
for me, they really were a miracle cure.

MamaLazarou I think the point that you may still be feeling the effects of your PND is a good one. I also think you may be doing what I have done with regard to past difficult phases of life: looking back and thinking, 'If only X had happened / X hadn't happened / I'd done X / I hadn't done X', then it would have gone differently and everything would have been all right'. This is painful in itself, but there's a sort of compulsion to try and locate the turning point where you got set on a particular path, e.g., because your mum showed up late to take you to the bf clinic, you ended up having to stop breastfeeding. It perversely makes you feel a bit more in control to say ' That was why it happened'. But things are usually more complex than that. Unfortunately, if you've had a bad time with something, it doesn't actually help to realise that a lot of influences came to bear on how things turned out, and that in fact you may never have been able to control the situation in the way you would like to have done. All you can do now is accept that what happened, happened, and try not to look back and say 'If only...'

You sound like you are doing well with your son. Give yourself a pat on the back. The Serenity Prayer is the thing to think of here: 'Grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference'. Talk to your mum as slhilly suggested, and maybe ask her if she can do certain things to help you if that goes well - if not, look for other sources of support, maybe a parents' group or a counsellor. But the thing is to think of the future now. Your being able to breastfeed doesn't matter now (and I say this as a long time bfing mum) anywhere near as much as your general mothering of your son.

spiritmum, I guess I believe that if someone behaves badly towards me, I think it's important to tackle that. The extent to which I get cross or upset is a secondary issue -- the primary issue is to reduce the chance of their behaving that way again in the future.

slhilly, I can understand wanting to clear the air. But what if I tackle someone about their behaviour in the belief that they will change, and then they don't? I'm handing over my ability to be happy right over to them. Where does that leave me? Reliant on them in order to be happy.

I'd rather just know that however 'badly' people behave I have a choice about being hurt by it or not. That way I stop being a victim of other people and get on with making my own life.

Eighties, I love the serenity prayer - and one thing I can't change is other people.

spiritmum -- I'm not suggesting speaking in order to clear the air, but to resolve the issue. If it's not going to work, or is unlikely to do it, I wouldn't bother. Instead, I'd seek to lessen my interactions with that person.

To be clear, I don't think being a victim of another person is simply defined by whether they can upset me. It's also defined by whether they do other things that damage my interests or those of the people I care for such as my children.

In the OP's shoes, I'd be:

• telling my mum she'd behaved badly and the effect it had had on me. I would do so because I think it's important that people know what effect their behaviour has on others, so they can at least have the opportunity to reflect and choose to change if they want to.
• either giving my mum a limited opportunity to help again, or not, depending on how she responded. I'm not sure it's straightforwardly better to always jump to not giving her the opportunity (which is what I think you're suggesting), seeing as the help would be valuable to me if it arrived.

I fundamentally disagree with the notion that I have no ability to change other people. I think that many people won't change, but some can and do, if given the opportunity. My own FIL has changed dramatically from being a man who had flare-ups of vicious temper to a man who's at ease with himself and the world -- and he did it in his sixties, and part of the prompt was that his family told him he wasn't being nice.

the kind of response you're describing, spiritmum, reminds me a bit of why I used to dislike change management books like "who moved my cheese" so heartily: they used to say that people struggled with change because they retreated to comfort. That's often the case. But it's also often the case that people struggle with change because the change is not in their interests eg their pension is changed from DB to DC or they are asked to do extra work for the same money etc etc and in such circumstances, I think it's harmful to their interests in telling them to just accept the change with serenity. They should be working out whether they should respond to the change either by fighting it or leaving, before they consider accepting it.

Shilly, I'm pleased to hear about your fil. I do take your point about the need for change - in my case we're going through a tough time with the dc's school and I believe that the head isn't acting in their best interests, so having made our case through the usual school routes (meetings with the head, governors etc) we're moving schools. I am certainly not going to accept it! But at the same time I'm not going to be a victim of it (although I have to admit right now he's the one person who can really push my buttons ).

When someone upsets me I make it my problem. So for example if dh was doing something that was unacceptable to me I'd say, I have a problem, I don't like it when you do xxxx, therefore when you do that I will leave the room/go home/whatever. It's still up to him to change and I'd guess that your fil realised that he'd have to change or his loved ones weren't going to stick around in the way he'd have liked.

I don't agree with accepting change at all; but the problem is that we find change fearful. I'd much rather quit a job than accept unfair circumstances because otherwise I'm still allowing others to dictate to me, I'm still a victim. Am I making sense?(probably not!) But you can change your working circumstances even if you have to quit the job; you can change yourself. But you can't change other people. Your fil took the decsion to change himself. True, someone had to tell him what he was doing to those around him, but if he hadn't changed you would all have had to accept it. That might have meant not spending time with him, and I think the OP may have to decide at some pointg the degree to which she wants her mum involved. Accepting someone's behaviour and not feeling bitter about it doesn't mean you have to let them repeat it.

But in the OP's position she could still be setting herself up for more pain if she goes to her mum and says that she's hurt and she needs her to do xxxx, and her mum says she will and then doesn't. If she accepts that her mum isn't going to change then she can worry about herself and her baby.

If I were going to confront my mum in circumstances like this I think I'd have to go the route of, 'I have a problem, I feel hurt when you say you will xxxx and then you xxxx. This makes me unhappy. In future I'd prefer it if you kept your word and if you can't then I will xxxxx.'

I'm not going to talk to my mum: she knows how I feel, and I know she feels bad about the breastfeeding clinic thing. My brother told me they had discussed it, and had decided that as I am seen as such an independent person, they assumed I didn't need any help. She has apologised to my husband for being rude to him when he asked her to help us. I am just going to leave it there, and know not to rely on them next time (if there is a next time).

Hi, Mama, hope you're okay. Did you get to the GP?

Oh, my appointment is on Thursday. I am OK. Thank you. I'm still struggling a bit, but managing to enjoy my son a lot more now. I'm lucky that he's such a good boy, and doesn't seem to be affected by my misery!

I'm not sure that I would call it resentment, exactly, but I am envious and quite down-hearted when I see other people with supportive grandparents.

I have no family, and dh's parents have no interest in the dcs whatsoever. In fact mil just spoke to me on the phone to ask about getting a new radio and she didn't ask after the dcs once. Then I ended up snapping at her because I'm frankly just sick of her self-centred existence.

But we all know there's no point in being bitter. One might as well be bitter about not being a supermodel or an Olympic sprinter or something else that cannot possibly be achieved.

I like the point that at least we are not bothered by endless family barbecues and annoying demands by relatives that other people often have to put up with.

I'm extremely envious of people who have had the good fortune to have had help with their children.

I am not considering having any more children as I know I couldn't cope without help (in addition to DH).

2 CS,colic/reflux and PND and no helpful visits apart from literally one each from parents and sis and each friend.

I was very resentful for a long time but now, because the children are older (2&3) life is alot easier and happier.
Our family is all that matters to me and I have let go of the anger somehow.
We still visit each other and have family Xmas's etc. but there are no expectations any longer and I'm assuming that is reciprocal.

Hopefully you will get some help, prescription and/or counselling from the GP soon.
When that happens and things improve in your life maybe you can stop feeling angry and accept that it has happened and nothing can be done to change it now.
Try to stop looking back at it and look forwards - things get so much easier, honestly, they do.

Sorry on reading it back this sounds a bit. I'm just trying to say that things will improve!