Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

I honestly think that my 9 month old child was almost abducted at an airport while traveling with my husband and I. It was 4 am and we were checking in with 4 bags and a baby in a car seat. We put our daughter down (we were the only ones at check in) and then a woman out of nowhere picked her car seat up with her sleeping in it and took her to the front of the line and said “She’s mine, I’ve got her” . Scariest moment of my life. I obviously immediately dropped the bags, ran under the railings and quickly grabbed my daughter and said something I can’t remember to the woman as she ran away- I still don’t know what could have happened… but I am convinced that if I hadn’t been looking, she would have been gone in an instant. I have two children now and I can’t and won’t get on a plane with them because of this. I won’t even go near an airport. My husband and I used to travel all the time. When this happened, we were taking our baby (now 4 year) old to St. Thomas. I miss traveling, I want to travel, but I’m terrified.

For whatever reason, ever since I became a mother, I have this overwhelming fear that something is going to happen to me and my daughter will be left alone in life without me. Lately it’s been a sudden food allergy and reaction like anaphylaxis, even though I’ve never had a bad reaction to anything in my life.

I was crippled with fear of leaving the house when my son was first born, that we’d get in a horrible accident and he’d be thrown around the car and I’d live and have to hand his lifeless body to the paramedics. Or that he’d quietly die in his sleep and I’d wake to find his cold lifeless body. I had horrible thoughts that I’d get cancer and die and miss his whole life and all of his growing up. Every single outing became a cause for worry and fear.

I also feared that if I didn’t do every single thing perfect that he wouldn’t love me and he wouldn’t be securely attached. I’d look at him and imagine I was scaring him somehow or that he was disturbed looking at me. That he wasn’t comforted by me.

I’m scared that relatives who can’t wear their masks appropriately will give my daughter COVID-19 and she’ll end up becoming seriously ill. I wish they’d just wear the damn masks over their noses. I’m scared that someone will kidnap her and molest her when we’re out in public despite me doing “everything right.”

I had a breakdown a few weeks ago because I thought the baby’s car seat wasn’t secured well enough and that we would get in a car wreck and she’d die. I have so much anxiety about everything with her, I constantly check her breathing when she sleeps, I do it so much that my thirteen year old son noticed and asked me why I kept doing it. I tried to explain the best I could, without sounded crazy that I needed to make sure she was breathing.

I’m a childhood abuse survivor. It took me years past when me and my husband were ready for kids in every other way, for me to finally agree to start trying to conceive. I was terrified that even though I go to therapy and have never been violent in my life, that I would be an abusive mother. Then when I had my baby, I was terrified by my intrusive thoughts. Thoughts about dropping my baby, accidentally forgetting to feed him and him dying, etc. It took websites like this to teach me that intrusive thoughts are normal, and something isn’t wrong with me.

Every time I sit down with my baby to eat, I fear he chokes. I don’t trust myself to intervene properly and won’t let other family members feed him food… not even my husband. I choose to prepare his meals, and am exhausted from the anxiety.

At 16 months PP I was cutting up my kids’ lunch. All 5 were being loud, whining, fighting & crying. As I was holding the knife I had the thought if I killed them it would be quite & maybe I could think clearly again. Pretty soon that one thought turned into hundreds of thoughts of hurting my kids. I didn’t want to actually hurt them but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. One day I broke down & called my husband to come home. I was admitted to the hospital & was later diagnosed in therapy with the late onset of postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder.

I thought about throwing my baby off of our balcony and watching him hit the ground. I thought he would leap from my arms over the rail as an infant and die.

It’s like I fell in hole. I know how to dig myself out but don’t want to.

I want to ignore my husband, kids, work, chores, and even personal hygiene. I don’t know if I really just need a break or if I’m depressed. It’s hard to tell. #speakthesecret