A fictional account, inspired by the voices of many mums.
For me, it’s not pain in a sharp, stabbing sense; it’s more of a disconnect. A longing. A wish to feel what you think you should be feeling. What it looks like everyone else is feeling. Like grieving. Grieving something that you’ve missed out on, and will now never have.
For something to be so wanted, so planned, so very, very much yearned for.
Those precious first moments — the mere thought of them helped me get through the nausea, the uncomfortableness, the ugh of pregnancy. The first skin-to-skin. The first smell of his hair. The first suckle at my breast. Those precious first moments that were supposed to be combined with an overwhelming sense of love.
That actually felt alien. Tinged with what I hate to say, but can only be described as disgust. There was a slimy thing on me, making noises that seemed to pierce my brain. It wriggled and I flinched away. I wanted to drop it, for someone to take it away from me.
But this was the happiest moment of my life. And I needed to remember it. So when the phone came out, I held it close and smiled.
Everyone looks at that photo and thinks the tears are of joy, that it is a beautiful capture of the raw love of the moment.
They don’t know how sick I felt. How much I wanted it away from me. How much I wanted to peel it off and shower away the slime it left behind.
This can’t have been my baby. There must be a mistake. A mix-up. I love my baby. I loved every kick in my belly. This isn’t my baby. That’s why it feels so wrong.
I know I sound ungrateful. But every time I look at him, I miss what I should be feeling. I grieve for what I should have, for what I do have – but don’t feel.
I am petty. I “use my dry sense of humour” to make people think it’s worse than it is. I love him really.
At least that’s what my husband says.
I’ll come out of it in a few weeks.
He doesn’t understand. I have more feelings for our next-door neighbour’s cockapoo right now.
I feel like I must be the most wretched person on the planet.
Some days I cry about it. But mostly I just stare at one place until someone asks me how long I’ve been sitting like that.
I know I’m broken, that something has gone wrong in me.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
When they first started talking about me going to stay in a unit — to have a break, to not have to worry so much — it seemed like a great idea until I realised that it was going to come with me.
Why it couldn’t have stayed at home, where it was actually loved, didn’t make any sense to me.
I needed to “bond” with baby, the said. I needed to not worry about anything else, like washing or cooking, and just focus on me and baby, they said.
I would rather have done the whole estate’s washing.
Clearly I’m just not cut out to be a mother. I thought I was. I planned for it. But my feelings say no.
And now it is stuck with me. It is going to be damaged too because it doesn’t have a loving mother. It is lying beside me, and sometimes I wonder if the stuff they say about cot bumpers being dangerous is true. Sometimes I imagine myself buying them, tying them on, and waking up the next morning and it’s just me again. No more it. Maybe I will love the next one.
I don’t do it.
I switch to me instead. If I wasn’t here, it could go home. To people that loved him. To people that called him a name that suited him more than it. If I wasn’t here, it wouldn’t be stuck here either.
It has started smiling. Sometimes I smile back — more out of reflex than feeling — but everyone jumps on it.
“Oh look at you two, bonding, you’re coming on so well. It’s those giggles that get you.”
I don’t know who I want to run away from more. It. Or them.
Once, when it cried, I put my noise-cancelling headphones on instead of picking it up.
Noise-cancelling my arse.
Somehow they made the screaming louder.
So now I wrap a pillow round my head and curl up in the far corner of the bed until one of the assistants picks it up and coos at it like it’s cute.
The communal lounge was scary at first, with all the other mums. I thought they were all looking at me wierd for being in here.
Then I realised it was understanding — because they were in here too. They got it.
The afternoons were when partners could visit. Some stayed through to evening. In my first week, my husband came every day. I didn’t know what to say to him. I felt betrayed. I didn’t want him to touch me.
He couldn’t come so often after that. The unit was a two-hour drive away and he had to go back to work, so he was only able to visit twice a week.
It was also the days he wasn’t there that I wanted a hug the most.
What would it be like without me? Better? Happier? Less screamy? It would probably grow up healthier. Having a mum that doesn’t know how to love it — recipe for lifelong mental health problems. It’ll probably be a drug addict by 13 or something.
Having no mother would be better than one that doesn’t know how to love their own child, right? Plus, if I’m not around, it could get an upgrade in a step-mum.
Not that I can do much about that in here.
Suppose that’s the point.
I started to feel a bit more myself in the peer support sessions, once I’d learned I could say anything and at least one other person knew how I felt. Each word reciprocated felt like a weight off — a little bit of fog clearing.
I’m exhausted. Drained. Too tired to fight. Just going along with their plan. The routine is the same every day. It helps my thoughts, knowing what is coming next.
We are building “little moments”. I’m learning to call it he and him, even his name.
The staff were starting to talk about home. That scared me more than being in here.
In here, if I can’t face picking baby up after the third try at putting him down, there’s someone else to help. Who would do that at home?
Home visits are difficult when home is so far away. We did hotel visits instead — just the three of us for a whole 24 hours.
But with no home or ward comforts, nowhere to escape from the crying because we were all in one basic chain hotel room.
I didn’t last the 24 hours.
It felt like a huge step backward.
I cried and cried and cried. I was never going to get past this. I was never going to be who I was before having a baby. Life was ruined. I ruined my life by wishing for something and not realising how unprepared I was.
The team and the other mums were great. They gradually got me to see that I wasn’t back at step one — I’d taken a sidestep rather than a forward one, but it was all still progress.
Slowly, I began having little pockets of joy with my baby.
I began to learn that these were our milestones. Not monthly picture cards on Instagram.
We all decided that a weekend visit to our actual home would be better than another short visit to another strange place.
I cancelled three times before actually managing it. It was overwhelming at first. My parents arrived. My husband’s parents arrived. I smiled until I literally fell asleep with exhaustion.
When I woke up, it was just the three of us. Baby whined. Husband picked him up. I survived.
I felt like a zombie. I didn’t realise how much the meds affected me. On the ward, it was the norm. I didn’t see how much slower I was until I tried to put the kettle on and empty the dishwasher. I needed so many naps.
Back on the ward, a couple of the other mums who had had home visits said they felt similar.
Before I even knew it, it was time to go home — permanently. I should have been elated. But I was terrified.
What would happen when my husband went back to work and it was just me and baby?
It wasn’t just me and baby — not for a long while. My parents and siblings took shifts spending the day with me. I mostly slept.
I missed the other mums. I missed people understanding when I flinched at my own baby crying.
My family was being supportive. But they didn’t understand.
I eventually found some support groups close to me. And while not everyone had been in a mum and baby unit, or even had a diagnosis, they got it. And the mix of their understanding each week with the physical support of my family is getting me through.
I’m not who I was before. But I’m becoming more OK with who I am now — at least some of the time.
My baby is my baby. Sometimes he even looks like me. I do love him.
It’s not quite the kind of love I thought it would be. Not the gushing absorbing world changing love I was told I would feel.
And I still grieve a little for that.
But it’s a love that is growing.
Credits: Words & Story: Lucinda Bray, Illustrations: Canva AI, Music: Lucinda Bray
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