Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

I fear my toddler doesn’t love me anymore and that my husband wants to send our kids to his mom so he can divorce me. I fear everyone is playing a big pretend game but they’re really all planning to leave me behind.

In the first few weeks after my daughter was born I worried that she’d slip from my arms and smash her head in the cement floor as I walked downstairs into our basement. I say “worried” but really the thought would fly into my head, terribly graphic and completely unbidden. This anxiety dissipated after awhile, but it was so strange. I never experienced anything like it before I had her.

Shortly after I gave birth to my first baby I imagined a sharp knife going gently over my baby’s perfect skin. It was really scary and I thought there was something very wrong with me. Why would I have those thoughts?

I get nervous when my baby is in my husbands care and he starts to cry i feel like he does something wrong and would rather just do everything hustle instead or ask him for help.

I had terrible images of throwing my baby into his cot or on the floor in a fit of rage when he wouldn’t stop crying. Despite loving him intensely and knowing I would never hurt him in a million years. I also, mostly at nighttime when he couldn’t sleep, thought that I was the worst mother as I couldn’t even get my baby to sleep. I thought my husband and baby would be better off without me. I got help early and now when something crops up I can deal with it rationally and it goes.

I had a traumatic birth and so when I thought I might have accidentally gotten pregnant with a second child, I imagined aborting the baby to avoid giving birth again. This was a wake up call for me because I have always wanted two kids. I went to see someone.

I am exhausted. No one understands how anxious and tired I am. I am out of shape, my house is a disaster, my baby doesn’t sleep on her own, my husband is impatient and I am the one getting less sleep!

I am always picturing gruesome, violent outcomes to my baby whenever we’re in the car, the bed, wearing or walking her in the stroller while her crossing the street— sometimes those scenes still pop up in my head. The heart palpitations I get laying in bed after the madness of the day is over. I still get super anxious at her crying spells, and I end up feeling like I’m a crappy mom for her constant crying. The constant pressure to maintain a “perfect” looking household, clean house, well-behaved kids, dropping all the baby weight, all on varied little-sleep. This is a Mama’s reality. I can only hope my children know that they are so loved, despite how inadequate I may feel about my parenting sometimes.

Because of how scared I am of everything having to do with my child I should never have had a baby.

I was terrified in the middle of the night that I would faint or trip with my baby while passing the stairs and she would fall down all of them and either die or be terribly injured. I was terrified that because I was the only one awake, everyone would blame me if something like that happened… and if I had already shared some of my scary thoughts, they would think I did it on purpose and take my baby away from me.

That when I’m not with our son, my husband neglects him… Or the daycare workers do. Pretty much anyone who cares for our son who isn’t my mom or me. There is no merit behind any of these feelings, and the Zoloft has helped… But I still get anxious when I see my husband sitting next to our son while he’s playing and he checks his phone. I’m worried that moment of distraction, something catastrophic will happen.

I can’t be a wife, mother and professional. If I am at work- I’m a bad mom and wife. If we go out to dinner without our son- I’m a bad mom. If I greet our son first when I come home or fall asleep on the couch at 8 pm from exhaustion- I’m a bad wife.