Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts

I sit with my colic baby in my arms, screaming his head off, going on 3 hours, and my mind goes… “If it’s so terrible being our son, maybe you should have been someone elses”…

My baby was a birth control baby. He was my fourth very close together. I was so angry he was here. So angry what he took from me. I wasn’t even sure I loved him. I’m still grieving what I feel he took from me. I still struggle to bond with him 22 months later.

I was holding my baby trying to get him to sleep and would have visions of someone shooting us through the window. I was terrified we would die.

When my husband told me not to throw the baby at him after the first day he went back to work, I wanted to stab him in the head when he walked in the door.

Every day I imagine some horrible way my son could accidentally be killed or severely hurt. Every time my husband walks up or down the stairs with him I feel sick to my stomach.

My daughter looks like my husband and his mother. Sometimes I get scared she’s the ugliest child in the room. Other times I have a fear of her growing up and looking like a man. At night I suffocate and can’t breathe imagining her growing up and becoming identical to my mother in law.

I don’t feel like I’m her mother. I’m not connected to her, and it feels like someone else would be better off with her than I am.

When ever my son starts his colic fits, a very brutal image starts playing in my head. I picture me, grabbing him by the ankles and smashing him into the ground over and over and over… Needless to say I’d never do it, but the thought is always there when he cries, and it makes me fear I’ll one day snap and do it. I’m scared of myself because of these thoughts.

I thought I would some how in my sleep throw my baby out the window.

My baby had issues latching and could not successfully breastfeed. I couldn’t mentally keep up with a pumping schedule. I blamed myself completely and saw this as a failure on my part, even though my son had lip tie. It was no ones fault. Still I was angry with myself and angry with my baby. When he would cry in the night I wanted to scream at him to shut up. A couple times I did. When he kept me awake for hours in the rocking chair, I had intrusive images of throwing him across the room. When I bathed him, I wondered what would happen if I just let go of him. When I walked down the stairs, I imagined dropping him. When I went out, I imagined him being hit by a car. Every move I made and every breath I took, I had horror shadowing my thoughts. I became paranoid of bacteria. I became obsessively convinced that my son was never going to bond with me because I couldn’t breastfeed. I was controlled by the thought that he was never going to love me. I had to do everything for him and be everything to him just in case he found comfort in someone else’s arms, just in case he bonded with someone else more than me. I hid this from everyone, including my husband, because I was paralyzed by the fear that he would be taken away from me. One night I imagined how peaceful it would be to die. My husband has a gun for hunting and I thought, why not get it over with? My son will be better off without me. That’s when I told my husband about my intrusive thoughts. He cried for me and held me. I started medication and joined a support group. Now I am a truly happy mom, wife and woman. I have always loved my baby and showed him endless love, but now I show him love from my heart instead of out of obligation. Although I was a very good mom during those dark days, I was unable to see it. Now I see it clearly, even when I make mistakes. I am a good mom and the perfect mom for my son.

I often thought of how much better off my children would be having a Mum that wasn’t ‘crazy’, the baby crying at night would set me into a panic. If they weren’t crying I’d peak on them at least once before I tried to sleep. I had many intrusive thoughts about my children being sexually abused by family or by random people breaking into my house. My own thoughts of hurting them or being violent, drowning them by accident, dropping them down the stairs, etc. I was disgusted with what was going on in my head. So many times I considered killing myself, so my husband could marry a more mentally stable woman and have a happier life. That my kids would have a better Mum. I’ve gone to a psych now and have been able to talk more to people I trust about where my head is at. My youngest is 3 and I still struggle sometimes with horrible thoughts, but I have skills now to better manage. It also helps, I think, that they aren’t as little.

I’m going to fail, I’m not good enough, somehow _____ is going to happen and my son is going to die. I’ve cried on the way to work, and broken down at work because of this. Being a mental health therapist, I know this is just cognitive distortions and anxiety, but in the moment it is everything and I am convinced something is going to happen.