Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

I’m convinced there is something wrong with my baby. And googling things all day long does not help. I’m so anxious I have frequent panic attacks and just sometimes want my life to end.

I have intrusive thoughts of my baby dying. I’m regularly imaging us getting in a horrible car accident, or him falling and getting fatally injured. I try so hard to push them away, but sometimes they are overwhelming.

I’ve actually been rough with my baby during the struggle of making him sleep. All other times I seem to be doing fairly well but I just can’t take any shit at nap/sleep times. One time when my baby was fussing and I was getting angrier with rage, baby brought his finger near my mouth. And I had this huge urge to bite him I was so furious. And I was instantly glad I actually didn’t do it. But then it scared me to death by what I just felt like doing to my baby. Biting someone with anger is an instant reaction and it made me so so scared that I had this feeling with my baby. I got more depressed thinking what if I had really bitten him that day. I would have been proved mad and my baby taken away from me. So far I’ve felt this twice and hate myself for this.

I’m afraid to take my son anywhere. I just want to stay home with him because I feel like it’s the only place I can keep him safe. But at the same time as I’m falling asleep I have to check the front door at least 4 times to make sure it’s locked, because I’m afraid someone will break in and steal him. I’m afraid of someone taking him away from me because he’s the only thing that keeps me going.

Everytime I walk near the stairs I imagine my 3 months old baby falling of my arms downstairs. Everytime she turns her head while she’s sleeping and I can’t see her face I think she’s suffocating. All the time I’m thinking the she is gonna be sick or have cancer and we’ll be on of these families that lose their one and only child. And I’m will die if this happen to me. I’m thinking all the time that something bad will happen, just because i had difficulty to have her with IVF’s and etc. But I would give my life for her.

When my baby had otitis when she was 55 days old and went to hospital for 8 days to take antibiotics, I thought that she will be psychotic when she grows up because of the traumatic experience…

Falling down stairs and crushing my daughter (I’ve fallen down a curb before while holding her). Crashing the car with her in it. Me surviving but not her.

Scaring her because a symptom of anxiety I get is that I get acutely upset and panic.

I had intrusive thoughts with all three of my children. With the first I had visions of dropping them down the stairs, with the second I imagined opening a window and dropping them out and with the third I imagined opening the lit stove and putting them onto the fire. I even imagined my husband coming home and asking Where’s the baby? Oh I put him in the fire. They were terrifying but after my first baby I learnt about intrusive thoughts and that they are “normal”. My husband also had them.

I just found this website today and the minute I read the symptoms, I sobbed. I’ve been dealing with scary thoughts for 3 or 4 months now. My son is almost 7 months old. I’ve been obsessed with always wanting him to feel comfortable and safe. To the point that he always sleeps with me. The only time he naps on his own is at daycare.
This obsession probably stems from my abusive childhood.
But it’s led me to all of these horrible and vivid thoughts of my baby somehow being put in a situation where he is made to feel unsafe or comforted. Whether it’s by me or not. Car accidents, where he’s hurt and wants his mommy but I can’t get to him and his last moments are spent wondering where I am.
Or me hurting him and him reaching out to me to get me to stop and love him
Or some one else hurting him. Or something happening to me and he never gets the comfort he needs from anyone else. Once, I was holding him peacefully and out of nowhere i imagined myself flinging him across the room. I remember feeling flushed and nauseous at the image.
I read a brief article a month ago about PPOCD and felt some relief because I was worried that I was beginning to have symptoms of psychosis. My mother had it and my sister had severe PPD.
I felt relieved that there was a name for what I was feeling and I had been having a much easier time with it. But the last few days have been bad and I had a dream last night that has had me in such a state all day that I climbed on top of my son and stabbed him. And he was reaching out to me and grabbing my arms, but I wouldn’t stop. This hurts to type. Who imagines this kind of stuff about their own baby?!What kind of mother am i?? I keep telling myself it will get better. That this is normal and it’s due to loving something more than i have ever imagined. I’ve been putting off scheduling an appointment with my therapist, who I had lined up before I had my son to help prevent this. But I really thought I had this all under control and id be able to proudly say I didn’t have PPD.But I realize that now I need to talk about it and get help. I finally told my fiance and we are going to get me some help. I just can’t believe I tried to ignore this.

While driving to help my reflux baby sleep, beyond exhausted myself, I would fantasize about driving into the lake in the middle of a Canadian winter. How that would mean we could both get some rest.

I was awake at 3am, with my kitchen trash spread across my entire apartment, digging for tiny pieces of plastic I had thrown away earlier. I NEEDED to find every. Single. One. If I didn’t get up and count them to make sure, one could be in my son’s crib and suffocate him. And it would be my fault.