u/Lushemet

As in title. After giving birth I kept having recurring thoughts that I don’t want my mother to visit and hold my baby, because she might drop him and hurt him. All the memories and feelings I felt during therapy before finally felt more real, because I realized that while nobody is a perfect parent I could never hurt my child whom I love so much, and who is so vulnerable and basically at my mercy, in the way my parents did. It doesn’t matter how much support or access to information about “good parenting“ they had, some things are just impossible to say or do to your own kid if you’re a normal person. You don’t need the best psychology books or perfect life circumstances to not be cruel to your own kin.

I also returned to therapy and I have a feeling that this time I will be able to make more progress and it’s the best time possible for it. I also realized that I want my mother as little as possible around my child. I have a strong mama bear instinct and firm boundaries must be drawn for me to break the cycle.

[First of all, I chose this sub to rant because I just consider people here to be a little more chill than on other subs, so please try to offer some advice that’s not just „go no contact” and „seek therapy„. I’m already low contact and I’ve been to therapy before and maybe I will go back if I need to.]

So, my mother is visiting us with our 1 month old son at 7w and staying with us for a week. She lived pretty far and it’s a long flight. I agreed to this reluctantly, I initially wanted her to stay at a hotel or book tickets later but she kinda invited herself in. I thought that 7w pp will be late enough for us to settle in and that just a weekly visit won’t be too bad.

I’ve been aware of my abandonment trauma for a while, due to past therapy, but having my own newborn made me finally realize how valid and deep rooted my feelings are.

My father left to work in another country before I was born and wasn’t at my birth. My mother lived with her parents and had a lot of support from them, but when I was 4mo she left me with them to chase after my dad and stayed with him there for at least 6 months (they never tell me how long exactly). My grandma was a very warm person who was kind to me, and after my parents returned I suddenly was left with them in a home where I didn’t feel safe and that was filled with constant yelling and belittling me. I remember most of my childhood was just waiting for my grandma to visit because I felt loved and safe with her. I also had many nannies, I think they weren’t paid well because one of them was a fence for some criminals and the others were some old ladies that just completely ignored me. I could give examples of how my parents called me names and made me feel inadequate all the time but it would be too long for a post, you just have to trust me.

I discovered that I have abandonment trauma later on, in therapy and when I was irrationally terrified of being dumped by every partner I had. I have a husband now who’s very caring and good to me and I still have this unexplained fear of being abandoned.

Having my now 1 month old son made me realize how vulnerable babies are and how I could never leave him and I never want to be separated from him and it just brought on such a wave of emotions. I think having my own child was the final step at validating my own feelings about my parents. When I was fresh postpartum and very hormonal I kept having recurring thoughts that I can’t let my mother hold my baby because she will drop him and hurt him. Those thoughts have become less paranoid but I still have a lot of anxiety about her visit.

I don’t think it’s postpartum depression, I don’t feel depressed at all, I feel so angry and disappointed by my shitty parents, I also feel a lot of anxiety about my mother’s upcoming visit and I feel like she doesn’t deserve to play a good grandma now. She seems to really want to visit, is super obsessed about my child and the pictures I send to the family group chat, and she’s become much more easy going since my childhood. I think she actively tries to be better, but at the same time she never acknowledged how she hurt me as a child and gets very defensive every time I bring it up.

I don’t know how to a) handle her visit well and set boundaries or b) tell her to postpone it. My husband says I should think about what’s best for my son and that it’s important for him to have a grandma, and that she will be helpful to us, but how can she be if I have all those anxieties about leaving her with my child? I just worry that we will either fight a lot or cry or she will be extremely upset if I tell her to postpone her visit.

I think I need to at least have some conversation with her about how I’m feeling, but I don’t know how to handle it and how to have it be productive.

I'm 31yo woman. Or baby boy is 3 weeks old and my husband (30y0) says he's done. He's very involved, very caring, does night shifts with me, but says he doesn't want to do it again and he wants to give all of his attention to this one kid. I see the appeal of it but I also don't want to regret this decision.

Our background: husband has a severely autistic brother (needs 24h care) just a little younger than him. I have a 9 years younger sister. None of us are super close with our siblings for obvious reasons. My sister was always closer with my mom, and he can't communicate with his barely verbal brother. My husband works in media and makes very good money, I'm a stay at home mom but I have a lot of creative hobbies. We both do. And I might work on a new big art project in the future. But my husband if definitely more career oriented than me and I just want to be sure I'm not making the decision to only have one kid for him and his career.

He makes the argument that travelling will be easier with one baby and the house will be quiet. And he's got a good point. I have ADHD and misophonia and I get sensory overload from sounds (I'm lucky I don't have a colicky baby lol). Sometimes when my baby is being loud I just need to go away for a little, and it can take me a long time to calm down. I also have Hashimoto's and I need a lot of sleep, if we weren't doing 5h night shifts I'd probably just die- I don't know how breastfeeding moms can do nights on their own, honestly respect. I think I would go insane.

And that's another thing, I don't think I'm a supermom. I love my baby the most in the world, my sweet little froggy who loves cuddling on my chest. He's perfectly healthy and strong and I feel like we got very lucky. I want to give him all the attention he deserves but I don't think I could handle more than one kid without hiring a nanny. And I have very bad childhood experiences because of my mother and father not being my primary care providers- first they left me for months as a newborn with my grandma while they were in another country, then I had so many different nannies I lost count, and neither of them were very good or cared about me. I was never close with my mom, we have quite a rocky relationship and I want something different for my child. I'm not saying that hiring a nanny or sending your kid to daycare is bad, I'm not shaming anyone for it, this is just how I feel personally due to my dissapointing early childhood.

Then there are all the physical things- having to heal and lose weight after every pregnancy, having to go through another potentially difficult labour (my baby was almost 10lbs, I needed him to be manually rotated and have vacuum assisted birth). Having to go through all the hormonal changes again, insomnia, maybe second pregnancy will be more difficult when I'm older? Maybe my second child will not be as relaxed as this one? Not as healthy? Maybe they will have a disability like my husband's brother?

But at the same time I'm still young and at good age to have more kids, I don't want to regret this decision and I don't want to resent my husband for influencing me to have only one kid. Also, this is probably stupid, but I hear so much negative comments about "boy moms" who are obsessed about their little boys, and I worry about experiencing judgement from other people for being too close with my child. It seems that the remedy to that would be to have another kid, but I feel like this is probably a stupid reason to do it.

I also worry, what if he decides to live far away from me and I don't have a "backup" kid to stick around? Lol I know this is probably silly but I am having these thoughts.

I’ve been avoiding wearing perfumes around my newborn, but it’s hard to go from testing new perfumes every day to smelling like spat up milk and cabbage. When do you think it’s okay to start wearing a single spray a day?

My baby was born weighting 4.130kg (yeah I have two tears). He’s five days old now. We formula fed from the start, I also gave him some colostrum but it was too much for me, emotionally and physically, to keep pumping, I also have low supply so now he’s just on formula. He seems to be tolerating it very well, he’s not gassy, poop looks good, he doesn’t vomit just spits up milk often.

But we’ve been getting conflicting advice on how we should be feeding him. Two nurses said we’re overfeeding him, one doctor said it’s impossible to overfeed a newborn. But he is not a fussy baby, he never cries for no reason- he either wants his diaper changed, eat, be burped or have his nose cleaned, and then he’s happy and goes to sleep. Should I deny him food and sleep worse? Idk it feels wrong, but I’ve also read that you can overfeed formula fed babies. And also how do I know we’re overfeeding?

I’m 5 days post partum, first time mom. I never wanted to breastfeed, I always had problems with my nipples being sensitive, but my plan was to at least give the baby colostrum. I also had a breast reduction so my chances of having enough supply were always super low.

I didn’t want to hate my baby for touching my nipples so first I expressed milk with my hand and then I pumped. I think I got more or less 30ml in total. I hated pumping from the start, and it didn’t get any less uncomfortable, in fact it only got worse and my supply also got worse. Then today I started having some physical symptoms while pumping- nausea, ringing in my ears, worsened bleeding. I’ve read that oxytocin can cause all of that, and it can last for weeks while you‚re breastfeeding, or even longer. So now I’m not only I’m having those psychological issues related to breastfeeding, but physical ones too.

Like I said before, my plan was to supply the baby with colostrum and then stop. And I fulfilled that plan. But now that I’m actually a mother and the hormones and anxiety are kicking in, I’m starting to have overwhelming thoughts that I’m ruining my child’s development. And that colostrum doesn’t even have any real benefits and I’m just trying to make myself feel good ab not breastfeeding. And the funny part is that my mother mostly formula fed me, and I’m 5’10” and 134 IQ. I know that my decision to stop makes sense, my husband wants me to stop and focus on the baby, but I just feel so bad. I also know that I’m not the first person on this sub feeling guilty, and I would tell anyone else that formula is okay and fed is best, but for some reason I just can’t give myself this grace.

EDIT: Thanks everyone, I’m making a decision to be a more involved mom and I’m stopping pumping. (Also my husband already threw out the pump for me lol.) My baby has no issues with digesting formula, and I am a happier and better mom when I’m more focused on my cute baby instead of my sore tits.

My baby is formula fed, he’s also in the 99th percentile (4.130kg at birth). I had no ambition of exclusively breastfeeding, he eats a LOT, my milk supply doesn’t seem to be there, I always had sensitive nipples and pumping makes me squeamish, but I still wanted to provide him with some antibodies. Extracting colostrum by hand doesn’t bother me, but I only get very little amounts. I gave birth on Wednesday so maybe my supply will still increase with time, but I’m just wondering if there are still any benefits in feeding him 1ml per feed in case my supply doesn’t increase? I just want to give him whatever I can.

I woke up early morning on Monday with a dull but strong back ache. After few hours I lost the mucus plug. I thought my body was just preparing for labour, but after a few hours I realized that my back pain is pulsating and it might be contractions. I googled back labour and it made sense, so I went to check in at the hospital. They confirmed I was 1cm dilated and sent me home. Overnight my contractions got worse, I was bleeding, but I thought it was because my cervical exam. The entire night I couldn't sit still or lie down, because lying down made contractions unbearable. In the early morning I decided to check in because of bad bleeding, and to everyone's surprise I was 6cm dilated already- surprised because I was handling it so well (pain at 6cm, back labour and all) and because labour was progressing so fast. I was in pain but I was able to talk and joke around, and my contractions were irregular, also still only in my lower back, so it was all different than what Google would make you think 6cm contractions are like.

They got me admitted and asked me if I wanted an epidural. I said yes please, it took them 3 attempts to get it right because of my scoliosis, but it was painless. I was then able to relax and lie down and close my eyes for a bit, something I wasn't able to do all night before. It was a walking epidural, I could walk to the bathroom and pee, the only side effects I had was some mild itchiness and numb-ish skin on my legs. I didn't feel most of the contractors at this point, until I was around 8cm. At this stage my labour also slowed down and contractions got more far apart.

But the problem was that my back labour pain was caused by my baby being sunny side up and being unable to progress. We had to break the waters manually and get me started on oxytocin (which I admit I delayed for a bit because I had a small meltdown- I was overwhelmed by the idea of becoming a mother soon). I got on all fours and tried to rotate the baby myself. It turned out later that he did rotate, but to his side. I agreed to the doctor rotating the baby for me. He succeeded, but I tore a bit because of this intervention.

At this point my contractions were frequent and strong, painful like the 6cm contractions I had before I got the epidural, but I didn't feel the pain "inside". But I was pushing for 4hours (!) and my 99th percentile baby was still stuck in one spot (pelvic bone I think?) and unable to progress. They started discussing the possibility of the C section with me, and I was devastated. I already tore and invested so much pain and effort into this labour, and I was about to have a C section? I was also terrified of having a major surgery after 2 nights of no sleep and not eating for 30h (I couldn't eat before the epidural, the contractions were too much for me to have an appetite) I was refusing to give up, but I almost did at one point, until a doctor checked on me, told me that the baby has progressed to the point where they will be able to assist me with a vacuum. With just a few pushes (and another tear, 2nd degree, minimized by an incision) my 4.130kg baby boy was out.

Baby was perfectly healthy, for the entire labour his vitals were perfect and we had a lot of time to make every decision. And here's the thing. I don't think I would be able to have most of the interventions I had without an epidural. I'm almost certain it would have ended with a C section and much much much worse experience. There was a woman giving birth in a room next to me and screaming like crazy, and my husband overheard a nurse saying that she refused to have her baby manually rotated- which I can actually understand, if she didn't have an epidural to numb her down. I also heard another woman yelling in such pain, as if they were literally sewing her arms off. When I asked what was wrong, they just said that she didn't want an epidural.

And you know what, I also understand the appeal of a home birth. I liked that night when I was home with our cats and having contractions, it felt very cosy and nice with our pets. But I also was in pain and didn't know why I was bleeding, I didn't know if the baby was okay, so I wouldn't call it a relaxing experience. Maybe it can be one when you're having your second or third baby and everything goes perfectly smooth. But usually at least one thing goes wrong. And remember, before modern medicine 1 in 10 women used to die in childbirth.

I tell other people my story and they get teary eyed and feel so bad for me suffering so much. And yeah, it was very hard. But I'm not traumatized, my baby is healthy, I'm just sore and tired. But if I didn't get an epidural or agreed to the interventions I think I would have been traumatized, and I don't know how the labour would have progressed. I think it's safe to bet I would have ended up having that C section.

(I know that these days you also have to add: This is just my story and my opinion and you are allowed to have a different one, but please be respectful.)