Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

Our apartment is on the second floor. Any time someone holds my son on the deck (including myself), I imagine him being accidentally dropped over the railing, and plunging to his death. It makes me sick to my stomach every time I have this thought. I have fears that I don’t love my son enough. I worry that I wanted to be pregnant, not actually have a child. I feel guilty that I often wish I could go back to being pregnant. I feel guilty that I miss time with just my husband, and that I miss my free time. I’m worried that sometimes I feel a tinge of regret. I imagine my son knowing that I feel this way, and that he feels heartbroken and unloved. I took antidepressants during pregnancy AND still experienced awful panic attacks while pregnant. I’m worried that I messed him up for life – that he’ll suffer from mental disorders because of my own stress level and medication while pregnant. I compulsively wash my hands, and can’t even use lotion, because I’m worried that he’ll accidentally ingest something toxic and then get horribly ill and die. I imagine that the lotion on my hands would get on his pacifier, or on my breast while nursing, and then indirectly get in his mouth and cause harm.

It was the middle of the night and I was having trouble breastfeeding my just weeks old son. He would just cry and I would cry. I thought about throwing him against a wall, which scared me so much. So I held onto him even tighter and woke up my husband to take him from me. I felt so scared and ashamed.

I have vivid, graphic thoughts about my baby getting a head injury. Falling and hitting her head, getting stepped on and her head getting crushed, or someone hitting her head on the corner of a wall when they’re carrying her. I am so so careful with her head but these thoughts creep into my mind when I least expect it. I feel so guilty when she even slightly bumps her head while rolling over or playing. I just want to get these made up images out of my head.

I am obsessed with thoughts of my baby being sexually abused. I have no idea why. I don’t like men (FIL, my moms BF, my brother in-law) to change her diaper or even be alone with her. The thought of a male putting diaper cream on her freaks me out. She’s a baby so she can’t talk and she won’t be able to tell me if something is wrong and that bothers me. I don’t like leaving her because I don’t know how she’s being treated while I’m away.

I keep hallucinating things at night when I’m trying to fall asleep – hands reaching into the bassinet to take him, blood all over him in the middle of the night, or him in bed with us not breathing. My husband tells me not to obsess over the thoughts, but I can’t help it. Some nights it’s easier to stay awake all night watching him than close my eyes and see some of the things I see.

I used to be terrified that I would intentionally hurt one of my babies (twins). There was so much pressure on me to recover from my csection as fast as possible. My husband got one week off work (unpaid). After that, I felt like I had to be a supermom. I felt like I had to do it all. Every diaper. Every feeding. The pressure got to me. I began to resent the twins. I had constant judging coming from my mother in law, she offered every piece of unwanted parenting advice you can imagine. I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. I constantly thought about how much easier it would be of we only had one kid. I scared myself with those thoughts.

I’m afraid to sleep at night when it’s just me and my baby and my husband’s at work. I’m afraid she’ll choke while I’m asleep or someone will break in and take her or I’ll roll over her and she’ll suffocate. Or something will happen to me while I’m asleep and won’t wake up. And then I’m too exhausted in the morning. It’s a viscous cycle.

The thought of going back to work is also making me anxious because then I’ll have to take care of the baby AND work and I’m not sure if I can do it all. My husband doesn’t want to get help, but he’s not helping me either. He’s sleeping during the day and goes to the office at night, and then drinks during the weekends. I sometimes feel resentful towards him because his lifestyle before and after having a baby didn’t change at all. I tried to tell him my worries but he said at least I’m gonna be working from home unlike him, so it should be easy.

I just feel so sad sometimes.

So so so many scary thoughts from throwing her into the fire, to us falling into the sea and drowning, to breaking her neck holding her uncomfortably. But the worst was someone abusing and injuring her while changing her nappy or looking at her inappropriately as I changed her so I insisted on only being the one to do it and no one being around. That was the worst because it would play out so vividly.

My son was premature and we spent a month in the NICU. Sometimes while I was holding him, I’d have this repetitive thought and flash of me throwing him down on the ground like a football. It was so disturbing because I didn’t want to hurt my baby but the thoughts kept coming. Once we were home, I still had those thoughts and also I thought if I fell asleep he’d die. I thought if I slept, I’d wake up and find his cold body in the bassinet. I was so ashamed, I didn’t tell anyone. Finally I talked to my OB and got on meds.

I have depression and anxiety. I’m going through an illness. I spend most of the time home alone with my two year old and can’t go anywhere. My depression is very bad right now and I wish we could both just disappear or that I never had a baby in the first place. People tell me I’m a good mom but I feel like I’m constantly failing and damaging her.