Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

I’m scared of my son being uncomfortable and me not knowing. Especially when he sleeps, he currently has a sniffly congested nose and I watch him when he sleeps because the breathing scares me. I bought a humidifier to help out but now my fear is the humidifier will hurt him? I hate feeling like this.

I’ve had intrusive thoughts of me and my son’s bond being broken in a severe way since his birth.
It was hard for me to see others hold him, speak of watching him even as a vague offer for the distant future, or call him any doting name that seemed possessive such as “my boy” or “our little guy”. I simultaneously experience physical reactions along with these thoughts including rapid heart beat, my face getting burning hot, and it being nearly impossible to think straight. For sure initially I was truly struggling to bond with my son, but at the same time, there were intrusive thoughts telling me everyone and everything was threatening, weakening, and disrupting our bond. It felt like I could not win and the fear of the thoughts was as bad as the thoughts themselves. Unfortunately my in laws, specifically my mother in law, have been significant triggers of these thoughts and even still now as my son is 14 months old. The frequency has calmed and I do therapy and take medication, but there are still things that trigger those thoughts. When this occurs, in an instant I feel in my body and emotional being that I am being threatened – that my son and I are being threatened – and that the person speaking is trying to get between us and separate me from my son. In that moment and often for a few days after, these intrusive thoughts seems completely plausible and as if the person speaking (likely without much thought) is forewarning me of truths that cannot be avoided.
I am not giving up hope, but I feel discouraged that these are still occurring. It’s difficult that despite a sea of real experiences to the contrary, when the thoughts come, the threat to our bond seems just as real as ever.

Around a week after my first son was born I was so overwhelmed, out of my depth, sleep deprived, shell shocked and depressed that I started to think the only ‘way out’ was one or both of us dying, which in turn made me ill with guilt. I was too numb with all the bad to feel any positive emotion and had to create / force random thoughts of my baby in weird situations (like riding a horse (?)) to make myself feel the love I knew was there. I self harmed constantly to release and was so mentally unwell looking back on it years later but was too afraid that ‘they’ would take him if ‘they’ knew how I really felt. Wish I’d been able to get help, lost my first 2 years of motherhood to total misery. Little man is 7 and a happy healthy child now. It gets easier.

We moved during the pandemic, I was forced to leave my job and now I am a stay at home mom of two boys. My eldest is 11 and youngest just turned 2. I don’t think I ever recovered from PPD and now though never diagnosed I know I have anxiety and it’s all the fears that I have is flooding my mind. My husband works and assumes that I am doing well because I get to stay at home with the kids. We often speak on me needing me time but it never materializes. I constantly feel like I am losing my mind. Everyday it’s a struggle to keep sane as I look for a job, try to make the little money we have left last, balance being a mom, teacher, parent and wife. Today was a rough day and tomorrow doesn’t look too bright either.

If I die today are there enough photos of me and my girls together so they remember me?

In the middle of the night, after my newborn crying every time I tried to put her in the bassinet for hours, I gave her to my partner and fell asleep imagining all the ways I could commit infanticide.

When I get the chance, I will get in my car alone and drive for hours aimlessly. In this silence, I think about how I’ve screamed at my kids, how I’ve failed them, and how they deserve more. I often need to pull over to the side of the road after realizing I’ve been sobbing uncontrollably and don’t know where I am or what I’m doing.

Every time someone offers to hold my baby when he’s fussing, or picks him up before I get the chance I feel like it’s because I’m not doing a good enough job. And everyone can see it but they don’t want to tell me I’m a terrible mom.

Sometimes as my baby cried I had thoughts that I would cover his mouth with my hand until it stopped.

My baby would be better off with my mother or mother-in-law. I am going to be unsuccessful at this.

My milk supply is decreasing at 7 weeks and if it were way back in the day my baby would die because I’m not producing enough food for him… I feel terrible I don’t have that bond with him anymore. Will he think I’m not his mom anymore?

I thought I might forget my baby outside in the cold, what would happen when my husband came home to find her so cold or blue and lifeless in the pram and that the only way that would happen is if something happened to me so my husband would find us both lifeless.