Trying to make peace with my motherhood regrets

Sally - 16 Oct 17

When people ask what was the happiest day of my life, my heart sinks and fills with guilt. I wish I could say the day my daughter was born. But I can’t. Most peoples’ lives change fundamentally when they become parents but for me I fundamentally changed. The shock, agony and trauma of labour that should never of been allowed by medical professionals to happen the way it did, meant I started my first hours of motherhood, shell-shocked, numb and eventually angry about what I went through. I felt my daughter and I didn’t stand a chance at a cosy, blissful 3 months of bonding and breast-feeding that I had dreamt of.

Instead I wept every Thursday for the first 4 months as I counted her age in weeks and relled in pain at how hard this all was. My daughter was forced into the world by ventouse. With a huge lump on her head within a week she was very unsettled. This continued for 3 months, she wouldn’t sleep, was an aggressive feeder and when she cried it went on for hours and hours.

I don’t quite remember the first few weeks except standout monumentally low moments. The first day my husband went back to work after 2 weeks paternity leave, my daughter didn’t sleep all day and cried for 7 hours straight. I was so close to book a flight to Australia and leaving both my beautiful new born baby and my loving husband behind.

I remember my Mother in Law coming to visit for the week and feeling constantly judged by her. The lowest point was when I was trying to get my daughter to sleep in a bassinet on the floor of the lounge in our drafty Edwardian rental property in November and my Mother in Law swooping in and putting the bassinet up on the table saying that the floor is the coldest place in the house. The week was full of these moments where I couldn’t help but believe that was a bad Mother. My husband would get home and I would walk the streets on dark rainy cold evenings crying. Not able to spend time with my daughter through fear of further criticism from my Mother in Law, yet not coping with being away from my beautiful baby.

The exhaustion was undescribable, I still don’t know how I manage to keep both my daughter and I alive that year. I tried to put on a brave face to the endless well meaning visitors. Hiding my internal wounds and my dark thoughts and feelings under a facade of domestic bliss. I was more concerned about having clean hair, home cooked meals and a tidy house than I was about stopping and enjoying this magical time with my new born daughter. Why, I wonder? Because it wasn’t magical. It wasn’t magical because I couldn’t process the shocking ordeal my body and mind had been put through trying to bring her safely into this world. My daughter, I have now learnt, is a sponge to the environment and emotions around her. Whatever the atmosphere, her behaviour with portray it. My poor beautiful little girl was suffocating in my shock and depression day after day. Not surprising she suffered with colic and couldn’t settle.

I look back now and wish I had done things differently. I wish had not have cared about clean dishes and showering. I wish I sat in my pjs day in day out breastfeeding and watching book sets, enjoy a time that would never come around again. I wished it away, I wanted to be in the gym, trying to restore the shell of my body to something with resemblaning the strong physique I previously had. I wanted to be in the pub with my friends, drinking and laughing their cares away.

And now looking back I wish more than anything I hadn’t wished it away. After a long time of trying for baby two. I now realise how lucky and special that time was, because there is a chance I may never have it again. Even if I am lucky enough to have a second child, it will never be the same as you don’t have the chance to sit in your pjs as you first born needs you to dressed and out.

For two years after my daughter was born I was adamant that I didn’t want a second child. It was too hard, I wasn’t a good enough mum, my body wouldn’t survive another pregnancy let alone labour. And now my biggest regret is saying this to the universe too loudly, because I think the universe was listening to me and it could be why I can’t conceive a second child now.

Sally

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