Why didn't my mum love me the way I love my daughter

[Flossy2021]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on here so please bare with me.

I am 27 and had my first baby two months ago a little girl. I can't even begin to describe the way I feel about her words just arnt enough. I love the bones of her absolutely everything about her. She is my entire world. I could just sit and watch her for hours and the feeling of love that rushes over me is so overwhelming it makes me cry.

However recently I've found myself unable to sleep and laying awake with all sorts of thoughts running through my head.

One thought that will never go away is why my mum (or dad) didn't love me the way I love my daughter.

A bit of background (long story short) my parents didn't bring me up i was taken into care by social services at a very young age due to alcohol and prescription drug addiction and eventually placed in the care of other family members.

As I grew up my parents would always miss supervised visiting, they wouldn't call to cancel, nothing they just wouldn't turn up. They never even sent me a card for my 16th birthday... safe to say I cried that day. But then when I did hear from my mum she would cry down the phone about how much she loves me and misses me but she would never put in the effort to turn up to see me or show people she could be the mother I needed.

As I got older I did have a relationship with my mother but it was extremely strained we argued constantly (mainly fuelled by booze on her part) I would overhear conversations between her and my dad saying really awful nasty stuff about me really negative stuff no parent would say about their child and when I walked into the room and asked her to say it to my face she would clam up, lie and say it wasn't me she was referring to even though I'd heard the entire thing from the other side of the door. I've seen messages between my mother and my sibling talking about me again in a really awful way it's liteally as if my mum just hated me so much.

She constantly lied, hid the truth about her boozing even though I knew exactly where she hid her stash and what she was doing as I could smell it the minute she was around me.

It even went as far as one day she took me out in the car and crashed it. She was arrested at the scene for being way over the limit. She admitted to drinking several bottles of wine the evening before. ... what sort of mother takes their daughter out in the car knowing they are putting them in extreme danger ??

Anyway...

My mum recently passed away from terminal cancer and although it was tough and very sad I still have such a feeling of anger and resentment and I just can't stop wondering why my mum didn't love me the way I love my daughter

I am going through almost the exact same thing . I suffered living with my mom and more abuse daily . I wish I had been given to someone else. My mom just died cancer also and I googled WHY COULDNT MY MOM LOVE ME THE WAY I LOVE MY CHILD and your message came up. I .struggling with the grieving process. I'm struggling with the exact se feelings. I love her so much I forgave her for her faults. But now that's she's gone the hope that one day she'd apologize is gone. She wouldnt of either way . But I'm struggling with feelings that hurt a lot.

I didn't have good parents either, not as bad as you describe, but still pretty terrible - my father was violent and coercively controlling, he had problems with drugs and alcohol. I was estranged from him from late teens and never saw him again. He died a few years ago. With my mother, it's been more complicated. She parentified me and used me for emotional support during the marriage, oblivious to the fact that I was desperately miserable and self harming as a teenager. She finally left him when I was in my late teens because she met someone else and bounced straight from that marriage to another one with a man who was in many ways decent but also a functioning alcoholic (and she started drinking very heavily herself, and she is awful when she's drunk). I was still trying to prop her up, still believing that it was my job to protect/support her right up to the point when I had my first baby and found that all of a sudden I couldn't do it any more. It was the beginning of the end of my relationship with her, TBH.

From what I've read it seems to be quite common for this to be the point at which we suddenly look at the poor offering we got from our mothers and aren't able to make excuses for or ignore it any more. You're not alone. As others have said, please access therapy/professional support if at all possible. I only finally caved and accepted that I needed it last year and TBH I should have done it a long time ago. I am still trying to work through and make peace with things. It's hard. Lots of anger and disappointment and disbelief and huge amounts of shame.

The most important thing is that you break the cycle, which it sounds like you are already on the road to doing. It is not about us. It was never about us. We just had the misfortune to be the child created by useless parents. But we can choose our own path going forward and choose to make things different for our own children. I can't fix what was done to me but I don't have to pass it on.

🧟‍♀️