Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

When my son was a newborn (3 years ago) I envisioned myself strangling him. It broke me. My husband caught on to my depression signs, and I told him what kept running through my head. With his and my mom’s help and encouragement I got help from a psychologist. I’m much better now thanks to them!

That I would cut my baby’s limbs off with a knife. So so horrible.

When we had just come home from the hospital and the scary thoughts were at their worst, I was convinced that having our daughter was a huge mistake! I actually googled things like, “I just had a baby and I don’t want it anymore.” I thought about things like giving her up for adoption or leaving her at a fire station, even though my husband would obviously never agree to it. I felt so ashamed of these thoughts. What helped the most was finding out that other women have had similar thoughts.

If my husband puts our 3 month old to bed, I have to check on him later on to see if his arms were put above the blanket and to make sure he’s still breathing. I also don’t dare to close the window in his nursery because it reduces airflow and may cause SIDS. I’m so scared of going into my boys room, looking at him in his bassinet only to find him cold and lifeless.

I would scream when my son cried. I felt like I was the worst person in the world for him. I thought everything I did was going to kill him. I still get moments where I think he’s better off without me. I just want to run away. But I stay. Fighting these thoughts. I don’t have a strong bond with my son either. Everyone I know shares stories of the undying love and connection they feel and I never had that. It kills me inside.

There is a baby fighting for his life in my town right now from being shaken by a babysitter. I go back to work tomorrow. The guilt I feel for leaving my child is overwhelming and I can’t stop crying.

There are so many thoughts and it doesn’t just happen in new motherhood. I constantly think of my children, my husband or myself getting hurt. To the point it is crippling and I don’t want to leave the house. Car crashes, disgruntled employees shooting up the store I’m in, my children falling off the balcony or being crushed, being kidnapped putting groceries in my car.

I hope my admissions do help someone. I’ve never shared any of this with anyone and years later still feel tremendous guilt for them, but this is part of my healing process because I know they had a cause. I had an emergency delivery 5 weeks early because of preeclampsia and my anxiety over it forced an induction which turned into an emergency cesarean. I couldn’t bear the fact that I in some way caused my baby’s early birth because I simply could not calm down. Feeling unprepared to be a mom 5 weeks early, I was now a mom of a preemie who was subject now health issues as a result of that. He had jaundice, macrocephaly, and digestive issues all potentially caused by being premature. My blood pressure caused me to be on pills I wasn’t comfortable breastfeeding with. So we did formula and he turned out to be dairy sensitive. At every turn I was a failure. I couldn’t control my emotions. He watched me cry on a continual basis. I couldn’t bear that I was such a bad mom. Everything I did from how he started this life too early, to what I fed him, to how his first sights were of an unstable mom filled me with unspeakable regret. My scariest thoughts were that I didn’t love him enough, that in my emotional instability I couldn’t properly be responsible enough to keep him alive, that I regretted having him, that I wanted to just leave because my family would be better off without me, that I couldn’t protect him from all the bad things, and mostly from me because my very existence as a “bad mom” was already ruining him and setting him up for a life of failure and hurt. Those thoughts are still painful but thankfully I can see them clearly as intrusive thoughts now. I hope this helps and else just like me.

Most of what I felt guilt over were because of things I’ve heard from well meaning people/experts and that’s the story I want to make sure is told. We live in a culture that mom shames deeply and that does not help postpartum. We need to be aware of how even scientific facts effect someone suffering from ppd. Unexpectedly I had an emergency birth many weeks early. All I kept thinking about was the poster in the hospital bathroom I read many times that brain development continues at 39 weeks. The poster reads about all the complications that having a baby early can cause, inductions can cause, and cesareans can cause. It’s intended to discourage scheduling births, but for someone with an emergency – all that data still applies and wreaked havoc on my mind that I was ruining my child by the necessary procedure I had to have. Then there was breastfeeding. Something else having a premature baby made it difficult to do. The shame that is constant for not giving baby your best can send moms over the edge whether or not that is the intention. It’s a reality. There is so much pressure and when every little thing and every big decision is made to fall squarely on you, that can be unbearable. My scary thought was my own self condemnation but also talking to other moms that would amplify my own feelings of inadequacy. I didn’t want to hear about their helpful husbands, sleeping breastfed babies, clean houses, crunchy organic meals, fitness routines, and supermom statuses. And that was from both modern moms and old fashioned 1950s housewives alike. It made me want to cease to exist even more.

Three days after my baby was born I Googled how to give your baby up for adoption.

I always wonder that a witch or someone with special powers will come over to me and make me choose between keeping my baby or just go back in time to when I wasn’t a mom and erase her from my memory. I would always choose my pre mom life.

I once put a blanket on her face when she was 1 week old but removed it after some seconds and started crying feeling the most horrible mom in the world.