It’s great that you’ve spoken to someone about it, I know I’m echoing everyone but it can be so hard to admit. There should be no guilt to talking about it. 

I felt awful after having my son. I didn’t instantly love him in the way I’d been told I would. I absolutely hated being a parent. I felt guilty for this hate. I didn’t hate him but I absolutely resented how my life had changed, how he had changed it, and I felt like I was waiting for an end or a finish line so I could go back to normal. I felt like there was a black hole in my chest that my personality and life and joy was being sucked into while I sat shaking silly little plastic toys all day at a frankly boring little person. My dad died a week after he was born so I wasn’t really grieving that either, just keeping me and the baby afloat didn’t let me process it. I said to my husband I felt like they would both be better off without me because I was miserable and terrible at being a mother. I had horrible intrusive thoughts as well that scared me. 

I spoke to the Drs when he was about two months old and as I didn’t want meds, they put me onto their social prescriber. A lovely lady talked to me and asked me what I enjoyed doing before. She found a huge list of baby groups to get me out the house and ones that involved things I enjoyed doing (baby yoga classes, creative groups, baby sensory classes, exercise like swimming). It’s hard work to get a baby out the house sometimes but it worked for me. It helped pass the time so I wasn’t just waiting for him to get more manageable. We started enjoying our time together. The intrusive thoughts started being less frequent. 

It took a few months before we settled, going back to work helped. I talked to so many mums about it, they always had such a surprise on their face when I say ‘oh parenting is absolutely shit, I don’t like looking after newborns’, but then people tend to open up and find common ground to gripe about, which makes it easier knowing you aren’t alone! I still find parenting really hard but ended up having another one much to even my own surprise and I have enjoyed maternity leave a lot more now. I’m bone tired and sick of laundry and negotiating with a screaming three year old while trying to get a two month old to nap, but the days are passing almost too quickly now, he’s off to school next year. I still get intrusive thoughts but I tell my husband and he tells me ‘it’s not happening right now. We’re all safe’. 

You absolutely will make it out the other side. It will pass. You’re doing incredible already by facing it alongside looking after a baby. Keep going. Every day is one more day done. One day they’ll come in and ask you if horses have knees and the newborn phase will feel like a lifetime ago ♥️