struggling to cope with feelings that my baby hates me.
My baby is 4 months old and it feels like she absolutely despises me.
I understand that babies at this age don’t have the capacity to “hate,” but it truly feels like she hates my guts. She is SO smiley with my husband, which I absolutely love, but she just refuses to settle with me the way that she does him.
She will sit on his lap without fussing, smile and laugh with him, and even break her little neck to search for him when he’s walking around/out of a room. She will look at me in the eyes and smile with me, but she refuses to sit on my lap, refuses to let me cradle hold her unless I’m feeding her a bottle, and screams so loud she’s red in the face when I try to just simply hold her like he does.
It compounds my feelings when other people can hold her and she’s calm and fine with them, but when I grab her to feed or change her she starts absolutely losing it again. I feel like I genuinely can’t comfort her. When I try to put her to sleep she will cry and cry and cry until she almost cries herself to sleep, no matter what I do I can’t get her to stop crying. Sometimes she’s more calm, but most of the time she is just losing it.
My husband and I watch her about the same amount, I have her a little more than him because he has to do some work, but a majority of the time we have the same amount of “care” time with her, so it isn’t like she views me as her primary caregiver, atleast I don’t feel that she does. I’m so afraid that she isn’t bonding with me and that I’m going to accidentally withdraw from her because I’m struggling to cope with these feelings. I try so hard to remind myself that she’s just a baby and she isn’t capable of hating me, but it’s so hard to see her calm and happy with literally everyone BUT me.
I love her more than life itself, and I will never stop pouring love into her, no matter how hard it is to do so, I just really don’t know how to cope with these feelings. It hurts so bad feeling like your baby hates you.