Pregnancy

[Guest_10458609]

Hi there,

I’m currently 27 weeks pregnant and have been feeling a lot of doubt about if I will be a good mother. On top of that I’m constantly anxious if my baby is okay which gets draining for me and my husband also who is always getting my thoughts out loud.

I’m worried I’m not a good person and my baby will be like me. I feel like I’m constantly upsetting everyone around me and not nice.

I have a history of depression and anxiety pre pregnancy. I love being pregnant but I feel so alone. I feel like no one cares when I know they do. I tried to talk to my husband but he just brushes it off and doesn’t realise how much my mind is being affected by my thoughts. I also feel so guilty for complaining as I’m lucky to be in this position

how do I go from here

[therising]

The warmest of welcomes to you at what is both an incredibly exciting and stressful time in your life.

As a mum, I can relate to a lot of your concerns. If it helps to put a positive spin on things, it's the nature of any significant quest to hold a lot of questions. Each question and answer or revelation becomes a step forward. While we can be asking all the right questions, it definitely doesn't help when no one seems to be offering key revelations. It then kinda becomes about 'standing still, while doing nothing but asking questions'. This can become depressing. I fully believe we're designed to feel our self evolving in significant ways, to feel our self moving forward, making progress.

I could easily argue with some people when it comes to what makes a good mum. Based on my own experience, a good mum is not one who necessarily breast feeds her baby, for a start, but one who feeds her baby in any way that meets the goals of 'nutrition and weight gain'. I struggled horribly with both my babies (who are now 18 and 21). I struggled to breast feed, to bond, to feel love. I struggled though exhaustion, stress, depression and a serious lack of understanding from others. My inner demons had a field day when my kids were babies, with my harsh, brutal and depressing inner critic leading the pack. Btw, when it comes to being a good mum, I'd like to change the 'Breast is best' mantra to 'Breast is best is bull****'. What's best is the baby and mother's health and wellbeing, especially the mother's mental health. In some cases, what's best is bonding time with a bottle, something the father can experience too, so that the mother can get 6 hours of unbroken sleep.

I'd say a good mum is one who recognises her child as being one of her greatest teachers in life. Through the challenges they offer, we can learn to be more open minded, learn to be more patient, more tolerant and more reasonable (open to being able to offer and accept good reasons). Through the challenges they offer, we can become great problem solvers, analysts and more deeply feeling in the way of compassion, empathy and care. We can also become fighters, as opposed to remaining people pleasers, as we fight or advocate for them. Basically, they can lead us and teach us to evolve beyond who we were before we met them. I'd have to say one of the greatest lessons on offer involves them teaching us about who we were as a young child, before we forgot. Once, we had a greater sense of adventure, a greater sense of wonder and awe, a far greater sense of imagination, a greater sense of feeling and the list goes on. They help us re-member our self, put our self back together. They help us return to or 'come to our senses'. They offer lessons in developing our sensitivity (our ability to sense), which can turn out to be our superpower.

When it comes to people caring, I've found while some people do genuinely care, they don't necessarily care in the ways we really need them to. With that breast feeding issue, for example, my mum cared enough to say 'You need to stop trying, it's destroying you. You've worked so hard. Enough is enough'. Others only cared that I kept trying, which was just plain depressing. My mum was the only one to raise me, to be more conscious of hard I'd tried, more conscious of my needs and she also raised me to finally feel a sense of relief. Relief is a beautiful feeling that others can gift to us.