By Anonymous Guest Blogger
It started in the second trimester of my second pregnancy. My daughter was about 3 and 1/2. Up until a few months before, we shared a bed every night. See, my husband travels for work and while I was pregnant, we didn’t travel with him. My daughter and I stayed with my parents and we spent about 10 days a months with my husband. Not ideal, but could have been much worse.
We were new back in the area, all my friends from high school with kids were gone, and I had long ago lost touch with the child free bunch. I didn’t really know what to expect about going from one child to two. My mom had vague and fanciful memories from my childhood, as the baby of three. She didn’t offer much advice or guidance and what was happening to me was too shameful to talk about. And so I kept quiet.
As the days past and my belly grew, I became more and more irritated by my daughter. Certainly she had her own feelings about the impending birth of her baby brother, but she seemed excited about it. She had some questions, but nothing out of the ordinary. She was acting basically the same as she always had, like a three year old. So why was she driving me crazier as each day passed? It must be the hormones, I concluded. It was the logical explanation.
When my son was born, it was more wonderful than I remembered, and not in the way where you just forget how wonderful it is to have a baby. It really was better. The first time around was stressful. I cried every waking moment, it seemed. Looking back. I did not enjoy my daughter as a newborn. Not the way I’m enjoying my son.
As the months passed by, I kept nursing my son, we kept bonding. It seemed as though the more I bonded with him, the less I could stand my daughter. I began to dislike her. I resented her when she needed something from me, when she wanted my attention. It took time away from me and the baby. She was trying so hard, too. I felt guiltier and guiltier. Her touch made me cringe. Am I even a woman? Am I becoming a monster? When she laughed or told me she loved me I wanted to shake her. I wanted to hit her. I could not stand my own child. How could this happen? I was so happy. My marriage had never been better and I had never felt a love like I had for my boy. I wanted to ask someone, anyone, if this was as bad as I thought. But I was too ashamed. I thought I should probably see a counsellor. But I didn’t.
I googled it. Nothing. No one else seemed to be falling out of love with their first after the birth of their second. Finally, I got up the nerve to discuss it with my best friend, my husband. He assured me that I did not, in fact, hate my daughter. He was so wonderful to me when I felt like a monster. Maybe it will change…?
Then, slowly, I started to laugh with her again. Not a lot, and there was still more bad days than good ones. It seemed, as the baby started crawling, I could hug her again. We started playing together. The baby started walking and it seemed it was leaving. That horrible feeling. It was going away. Almost as gradually as it had started, I felt myself developing a relationship with my baby again. It was different from when she was the ‘only’ but it was getting better.
So whats my point? I learned, about the same as I started recovering from this…this thing, that MANY other women go through this. But no one seems to talk about it. It just sounds awful. We don’t want to admit it. We don’t want to be judged. We want people to think, to know that we are good moms. I cried myself to sleep every night during the happiest point in my life. I KNEW there was something horribly wrong with me. But there wasn’t. So, I want to help other women that might be experiencing this to some degree or another. You’re not a monster. You don’t hate your first child. It will pass. Don’t beat yourself up, Momma. You’re not the only one.
