Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

I’ve been struggling since having my youngest my anxiety has got worse and depression I’d never hurt my babies but when I’m trying to sleep I have bad thoughts all the time, like she just stops breathing or she gets run over by a car or someone kidnaps her and kills her. Some of the things I see in my head are so disturbing it scares me so much. I don’t know what brings it on but id like it to leave it scares me to death wish I could take it away nothing seems to work. I never sleep I have peace of mind when she is sleeping with me then I can feel her with me 🙁

I worry that my son will slip out of my arms taking a bath and I’ll just watch him drown instead of saving him.

Whenever I’m alone I image what would happen to us if my husband died. I almost always settle on putting my son up for adoption and killing myself…

The neighbors will call CPS. They’ll show up on a really bad day. They’ll take him away and everyone in my life will hate me.

After sleeping through my first born’s birthday due to being put to sleep for an unplanned c section, latching difficulty, and my milk only coming in on one side (and promptly leaving), I have convinced myself in my head that I am somehow less of a mom for not pushing, not being conscious when he arrived, and not being able to breastfeed… and that any other responsible adult could offer my son what he needs and that I am no different than anyone else in his life. As a result, images of other moms giving birth or breastfeeding their babies trigger me into painful tears, daily, since he was born, five months ago.

I can’t even remember giving birth to my son, i was blacking out through the entire labor process. I feel awful for asking my family questions about what happened. I’m terrified i’ll come off as uncaring if i tell anyone about my experience.

I had debilitating ppd/ppa with my son who’s now 4. I resented him and everything he took away from me… we had the hardest time breastfeeding until 5.5 mos in and then he just stopped nursing so I had to exclusively pump for him and then I really hated him bc pumping is misery. He wouldn’t nurse and then he wouldn’t eat solids. He was allergic to dairy formula and I refused to give him soy. I don’t think I really felt love for him until he was 18 mos when my milk dried up and he started sleeping through the night instead of waking 10+ times a night. It took me a long time to get back to a good place and I felt like myself and got pregnant again bc I always wanted two. And I mostly feel ok but sometimes the stress gets me and today I had the worst intrusive thought. I was driving home from dropping my son at daycare and caught sight of my 7 month old daughter in her mirror and out of nowhere there it was: i thought it would be nice to drop by my friends house to see her and her daughter and I imagined pulling out a gun and shooting myself in the head. It was so quick and so awful. I don’t feel suicidal but there it was. A gut punch and I started sobbing. I’m a good mom. I know I’m a good mom. I don’t want these thoughts.

I am angry and sad that my first year with my son is clouded with my regrets about how I’ve already failed as a mother. When I look at photos from this past year I don’t see the happy moments, my brain automatically begins to list all the things I did wrong. I constantly have a highlight reel playing in my head of all of my worst moments as a mother. I’m now pregnant with or second baby and I’m absolutely terrified of screwing everything up again. I want to scream because I feel like this should have been so much better.

Not being able to feel like myself again. And that I will go crazy, and it would be to hard for me to get better. And that I’m going to be the type of person, that won’t be able to leave their house. Cause taking on the world is a scary thing. And I wish that I can just, be able to leave my baby with his dad. And have a day to myself. But I feel like I can’t cause, I need to be there for him. But when I’m near him, all I want to do is get away from him. And sometimes I feel like I’m going to stop breathing and die, cause my brain is getting the best of me.

I began to resent my husband for all the “good” sleep he was getting and I became mean and disgruntled because of that.

I thought I “hated” my toddler for demanding so much while I had to take care of the new baby. I was angry all of the time. I had to physically bite my own tongue so as not to yell and curse. I just want some alone time. Just a little bit like even 20 minutes to shower alone and comb my hair, but I feel like a bad mom for wanting that. I am their eveything. But I am mad and mean and grouchy and I trying to accept that my personal life is now over. I know its not true but this is how I feel.

I regretted having her and ruining the perfect happy family my husband and I had before she was born. I hated when she cried and I couldn’t “fix” it and I would yell at her “JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT”, which would turn into me sobbing that over and over until my husband would wake up and take her from me. Then I felt like I was the worst mother ever for not knowing what my baby needed. When she caught her first cold that turned into bronchiolitis it was again my fault that she couldn’t breathe properly and was wheezing. The fact I couldn’t fix her breathing issues threw me into a tailspin and I would have a panic attack just listening to her struggle to breathe. I wanted to be the perfect mother that was in sync with every need my baby had, and not achieving that was unacceptable and everyone would think I was a terrible mother and take her away from me.