Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

When riding the car ferry I couldn’t get out of my car for fear that I would drop my baby over the railing.

When I was pregnant I had an irrational fear that I had slept with someone other than my husband, and that I couldn’t remember it. I was worried that my husband wasn’t the father, even though I had never been with another man. I thought about it daily, and I dreaded the weeks leading up to giving birth, literally worried sick. When they first brought my son to me, the first thing I did was look at his face to make sure that he resembled my husband.

I was sure my baby was going to die of SIDS. Every time I left the room or closed my eyes, I had vivid images of finding my child dead, his funeral, his body in a casket, and even visions of me mourning afterwards. It was if it had really happened.

I’m so scared my daughter is going to get cancer or some other terminal illness. She’s only eight months old and hasn’t even had a single cold. I feel like it can’t (shouldn’t) be this easy, and that eventually fate will catch up and she’ll be so irreversibly sick.

At night when I’m breastfeeding my son I think about the life I could of been living at 26yo and wish I had an abortion and cry about the fact that I wish I had an abortion. I love him with my whole heart and always wanted a baby but now that he’s here, I wish I never got pregnant. I feel like the universe is punishing me for some reason by allowing me to have these constant thoughts. When will I not feel this regret?

I couldn’t put him in the car without starting the engine first. I managed to convince myself that I was going to put him into the car, and somehow fall and knock myself unconscious leaving him to cook inside a boiling hot car. So I had to first start the engine, then put him in. This then progressed into making sure I always had 1/2 a tank or more of gas. If I had less gas than that, i would get myself into such a panic attack that I then had to sit and calm down for 30 mins before driving. It was a nightmare and showed itself in many other scenarios, this was just the main one because it occurred every day.

My six month old daughter was an unexpected, unplanned pregnancy that I discovered at 32 weeks. Because I wasn’t planning on (ever) having kids, I thought back to all the stuff I had that were considered big ‘no-no’s while being pregnant—wine, Advil, energy drinks, a cigar, no prenatal vitamins—and felt such fear for her well-being that it has persisted after she was born into present day. I worry she won’t develop well or, worse, will somehow come down with something life threatening or fatal because of how negligent I was in my unknowingly pregnant state. I also have not been able to breastfeed and though I’ve gotten over most of the guilt for that and am happy I have the option of formula to supplement, I worry that she won’t be as nurtured or healthy as children who are breast fed. All of this combined has made the thought that I’m going to ultimately fail (as in, lose her) feel very possible.

When I was 9 weeks pregnant life got really hard and I started praying for a miscarriage because I couldn’t imagine having a baby with everything going on. Now I’m afraid something bad is going to happen to her to punish me for not appreciating her from the beginning.

I worry that if I sleep I will wake up and my baby won’t be breathing and it will be all my fault because I didn’t check if he was breathing.

I hate the window in my son’s room. It has no screen yet and his room is on the second story. I can’t break the image from my mind when the it’s open that his weight gets displaced while holding him too close and he falls out the window by accident, or worse, that I am throwing him out the window. It is torture to not be able turn this thought off. I hate that although I love him will all of my being and my heart and would lay down my life for him, that I feel like I am still capable of terrible things just by virtue of having hands and arms and being bigger than him.

I used to love dogs. Since having children I am terrified of them, they seem unknown, unpredictable threats. I have terrifying images particularly when walking in parks. I see a dog in the distance begin to bound up to us and I imagine them sprinting at me and attacking my toddler in his buggy or getting my baby around the neck, I see the dog thrashing from side to side and I feel sick. Sometimes I can’t speak or someone else talking to me won’t snap me out of it. I avoid parks on my own, I never have a picnic in an open park and encountering dogs in public sets my heart pounding.

My toddler or baby’s crying triggers a fight or flight response in me and I get overwhelming scary thoughts if they cry for extended amounts of time, particularly at night. I want to make them be quiet and my mind always pictures me holding them by the legs and whacking their head as hard as possible against a wall to make them stop. This is so distressing. I adore my boys, when they do accidentally hurt themselves I am a wreck and can be deeply shaken up by even small bumps. I don’t know how I can have all this love and seeming aggression at once in my mind.